The Method
by Delillium
Summary: During the Kira investigation, L is kidnapped by a mysterious man known only as Method. Put under brutal torture for the purpose of getting L to answer his questions, he promises him only one thing: that he will answer them. As the task force rushes to save him, a live stream being their only connection, L tries to both stay sane through the torture and solve who Method truly is.
1. P1: Chapter 1

_Part One_

* * *

 **1**

* * *

L breathed out slowly.

What was this darkness?

His mouth was completely dry. He pushed the surface of his tongue against the roof of his mouth and it was as if he could feel every taste bud slide against the rubber-like surface. A sugar and coffee after taste absorbed his senses. It tasted old in his mouth, hours and hours ago old.

His shoulders felt his sore, his arms numb.

It reminded him of the time when he was twelve on his school's playground before his parents died. When his biggest fear was the impending doom of Edwin Michaels who would beat him into another black and blue sleep. He ran to the monkey bars: a known weakness for the far larger and squatter Edwin. He climbed directly to the middle and hung there for a solid thirty minutes until the other boy grew tired of screaming his name and reaching for him.

Where was he?

He tried to open his eyes, but only darkness and something scratchy against his cheeks greeted him.

His heart skipped a beat in his chest and he breathed out again, slowly.

He tried to bring his hands to his eyes, but was met with strong resistance.

It wasn't like him to be this slow: where was he? Think, Lawliet, think. Use that brain.

 _"Come on, Ellie. Use that great big brain of yours. Isn't the answer obvious?" His red eyes flickered with mirth and hate and something much darker. Darker than anything he could understand, "Come on, Ellie."_

 _It was a black spirit inside, resting in his eyes and shooting the words off his tongue._

 _He knew the answer, but he didn't want the simple truth to be the end of his deductions just yet. No, some other answer must be there. He wanted this to be a test. He wanted this to be him, playing with his mind like only he could. He wanted this to be him just trying to test him, see if he thought he was as evil as everyone else thought he was._

 _But it wasn't._

 _It was the simple and hateful truth._

 _He looked into those red eyes: "The answer's obvious..." He said it with just the smallest bit of dread escaping from his mouth and tinging his words. He held back his personal feelings as much as humanly possible and then some because he was L. And L was not human._

 _This was rule._

 _This was law._

 _"It was you."_

 _He bit his thumb and looked away, back to his computer screen._

 _There was silence._

 _Maybe he'd wanted a more dramatic reveal. That had always been him. He wanted a touch of theatric in everything he did and in every investigation. And L knew this. And L didn't give in._

 _This was rule._

 _This was law._

L fought against his restraints a little harder. Yes, it was obvious by this point that these were restraints keeping him from moving. At the very least, he needed to get his brain out of the current dream state it was resting in.

Distantly, there was noise and words that he could barely make out, but they were there. It was proof of human life. But this could prove to be either vital or detrimental. He paused his efforts and let his heart and breathing match before focusing on slowing them down again.

He hadn't even realized his breath had become labored and that his heart had escalated to an almost alarming rate until he heard the sharp beeping noise in his right ear. He recognized it as a heart monitor instantly. Could it be that he was in a hospital? Maybe he was restrained in a bed?

No, unlikely. He was sitting up after all.

It could be medications though, he reasoned, making his thoughts clouded. And that could possibly contribute to a sense of vertigo making him only _feel_ as though he was sitting upright.

He gave it a five percent chance.

His body felt weak, his senses were numbed and his surrounding were a mystery. He was beginning to dislike the situation more and more and a sliver of panic rose inside him but he killed it with cold logic quickly: panic wouldn't benefit him.

Calm.

A heart monitor meant someone cared. Whether he was in a hospital, drugged and out of his mind, or somehow was kidnapped and being held captive, somebody cared enough to attach a heart monitor to him.

There was of course, the slim chance they were the type to feel a source of gain from inflicting pain and they liked to have a source of affirmation. A heart monitor would work perfectly in this case. Fear, pain, anger: it'd all be captured by the heart monitor.

That was a fifteen percent chance.

But more importantly, he knew that the restraints he'd previously been battling against were not going to break or release from around his wrists. He breathed slowly again, drawing in smoky breaths and releasing dry ones.

"Ryuzaki? Are you awake?"

L's head shot up towards the noise. Clearing from the fog around his brain, he strained to focus on the voice. Though he recognized the it, he couldn't pick out a name from his bank of words.

"Who is it?"

"It's Soichiro Yagami. Ryuzaki, are you alright?"

"I...believe so." L paused at the raggedness in his voice, "Yes, I'm fine. Where are we?"

"Ryuzaki...we're doing all we can to find you." Chief Yagami replied quickly after a brief pause, the words were urgent as though this would somehow further reassure him.

L remained silent.

"They must've thrown out your belt, because Watari's really having a hard time finding you." Matsuda spoke up this time, worry tied to every word.

L recognized the voice and paired it with the correct name instantly. His brain was catching up, the fog was beginning to lift.

"You're...not here..." L whispered.

"No. We're not." Chief Yagami relented.

"However, " Light begun, "Ryuzaki, they sent us a live feed. Whoever it is doing this wants us to have contact with you. We just can't figure out _why_. Do you have any ideas of who'd do this? ...We should start there."

L didn't even need to think. Could he think of anyone who'd want to do this to him if they could find him? Oh yes. Hundreds. But he'd always done the best money could buy when it came to vanishing, covering his steps, locking away personal files, burning his identity and burying all information.

Always.

"Ryuzaki?"

"It's possible this could be related to the Kira case...however, I have my doubts..." L begun, taking a breath to begin his next sentence but was caught with a dryness consuming his entire throat.

He coughed. A deep, guttural, sand-like cough.

He attempted to catch his breath and found himself coughing again. He resulted to holding his breath, swallowing again and again until the coughing fit subsided. He sucked in a couple quick breaths.

"Ryuzaki, are you alr-?"

" _Demographically_..." He swallowed, "...someone after Kira's powers would prove to have a low income and...little education. They wouldn't have the resources to find my location ..." He strained as he willed his salivary glands to work, "...or bypass my security systems. This is someone who knows what they're doing...and this would take considerable planning." His voice was beginning to lose itself.

He cleared his throat and swallowed a couple times, but he found his saliva production was decreasing exponentially minute by minute.

"They don't want information on Kira...And besides that, the fact they have me blindfolded is another question. Either they don't want me to see _them_ or they don't want me to see _where_ I am. So I must be familiar with one...of them..." L bowed his head slightly, "...Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with many places in Japan."

"So...what are you saying, Ryuzaki?" Matsuda spoke slowly, hoping he wasn't the only one slightly lost in the smoke left from L's train of thought.

"Unless my surroundings would give me a sufficient amount of clues to deduce where I am, which is unlikely, then I'm no longer in Japan." L paused, "Or, of course, like I said before, I could be blindfolded to prevent me from seeing my c-..." He choked on his voice again and dry-swallowed three times before opening his mouth again, "...captor."

He sucked in a breath, his energy was dwindling quickly. He felt exhausted from the effort it took to hold his head up and look vaguely in the direction of the light that the screen, he guessed, was producing.

"But, you have to have some idea of who would do this, Ryuzaki." Light replied desperately, "If you could give us _anything_ then we'd be able to-"

"Too many.." L shook his head, "..Given the right resources, there's thousands who'd jump at the chance to do this. No-...hundreds. Most would probably have killed me by now. I'd say a range between two to three hundred men and women are capable of doing this and would do it given the chance. But I don't know how they got past the security or found my location- Is Watari looking into that?"

"Yes, Ryuzaki. Let's just worry about getting you out of there. We'll try and figure out _how_ they did this later. Alright?" Light took control with a softer voice, he could hear the scathing dryness in his throat and the lethargy beginning to set in. The exhaustion was evident enough in his slumping shoulders, "How're you feeling, Ryuzaki? Are you hurt?"

"No. Light: describe my location."

"It's... too dark to describe. There's a light next to you, but it's from a monitor. I think it's a heart monitor but there's a glare."

"It is a heart monitor." L confirmed, "I heard it go off earlier."

"I thought I heard it." Soichiro added, "But it was faint." Then, as if to explain this phenomenon, he added, "The sound wasn't working properly then, Ryuzaki."

L felt his hands against the chair. Wood. He felt his wrists against the straps. Leather. He attempted to feel the flooring:...

"Shoes. I have shoes on...why would they put shoes on me...?"

He moved to pull one off with the opposite foot but quickly found his feet were also strapped down: to the chair's legs. He pulled his legs against them but found they were just as unyielding as the wrist straps.

The temperature was beginning to drop. Down to an icy chill. He felt his skin prickle against the A/C that kicked on just above him. The breeze flooded down the neck of his shirt and his brow furrowed.

Who?

He begun to run names through a quick mental test: Capability, means, motive. He was pushing dozens of criminals through this test with every beat of his escalating heart. He was beginning to grow anxious.

Why was he left unattended for so long? Where was he? Or she? Though he put the chances of it being a female at a slim twenty percent, he left the possibility open. He felt exhaustion beginning to weigh heavy on him. He felt drugged. He battled the effects as long as he could, but it was now, that he felt it might be a battle he'd have to admit defeat to.

It was on the verge of sleep and twilight that he heard Light's voice at the same time he felt a shocking rain of ice cold water rush down his body. He gasped and his head shot up, eyes bulged beneath the black material to be met with utter darkness. His pupils constricted to pin points and his hands shook. His back arched in pain and his entire body was left trembling against the freezing air and the ice water.

"I need you awake." The voice said flatly. It was rough like he was choking on phlegm and bark. He put it around forty-five. A smoker. And completely unfamiliar. It set off no alarms in his brain. His every neuron focused on the voice, checking it against every person he'd ever known. But nothing came to mind.

Absolutely nothing.

"To the concerned party on the screen: Remain silent. I'll be explaining very soon. I'm not here to perform unnecessary torture. I promise that." He paused and the sound of something hard and heavy dragging met L's ears, "I'll be asking some questions.." He paused, placing the object where he wanted, "...and if I get my answers, you'll be unharmed. Understand?"

"And if I don't answer?" L fought against the freeze spreading across his body and the pounding headache racking his brain, trying to focus on the voice and nothing but that voice.

" Let me put it this way...answer me now, or answer me later. It's your choice how much pain you want to go through first. None, would be my suggestion. But you _will_ be answering them."

"It really depends on what you want to know..."

"First of all, _Ryuzaki_ , I'm unconvinced you're the man I'm looking for. I'm looking for a man who goes by L. Can you prove you're L?"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Because if you're not L, I don't have any use for you and therefore..." He paused, "... _expendable._ "

"...Then how do you want me to prove it?"

"I know L's cases. Inside and out. Tell me about the case _before_ the Kira case."

L debated answering the question. On one hand, he wanted to test and see how he would react. On the other hand, he saw no harm in telling this information. He opened his mouth-

"What's the meaning of this?" Soichiro yelled out, his hand slamming into a desk, "You kidnapped him _before_ you even knew _who_ he was?"

The man released a heavy breath from his chest.

"Ryuzaki, if you care about your own well-being, I'd ask your _friends_ to be quiet." Ryuzaki felt him move beside him and listened to each individual footstep. One...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight...nine...ten footsteps. And a limp. He flipped a switch, and through the blindfold he could see the lights had turned on. There was a low deep hum and a cold air stopped behind him. A hand suddenly grabbed him by his still dripping hair and pulled his head backwards. A towel was on his face before he could take a breath and the same ice cold water poured across his face.

It felt as if he was drowning. Suffocating beneath an ice cap.

He tried to gasp for air but water entered instead and there was nothing but a hard burning in his sinuses. He coughed against it as it trickled down his throat and choked.

 _His head was beneath the water before he could take in a breath. He felt his lungs burning within seconds._

 _He was drowning. Actually drowning._

 _Black spotted his vision, darkness tinged his eyesight._

 _Fourteen and he quickly came to the decision it'd be better to just give in rather than fight against it. The boys holding him under was eight times stronger than him, maybe even more. There was no getting out of this one. For once, brute force would match his sharp wit. He'd calculated a way to get out of this and it was impossible. He knew this._

 _Two boys held his legs, two held his arms and another was pushing against his neck. And all he could do was breath in the lake water and watch the algae float around his face._

 _Here was death._

The water stopped, the rag pulled from his face and he took in a gasp of air. His chest heaved in the oxygen, spasming with relief. His hands twitched, his legs jerked uncontrollably.

"Tell me the case before the kira case."

L weighed the consequences and couldn't think of any. He wasn't at his full deducing power at the moment. There were shoes on his feet, he was sitting _'normally'_ and he was quite possibly drugged. However, he decided he was sound enough to make this decision.

"L.A...The BB Murder Cases." He said it calmly, though mostly out of breath, without any urgency in his voice and it came as almost a surprise to the shaken task force watching in silence.

It was as though L was, truly, an unshakable force.

"Victims."

"Believe Bridesmaid...Quarter Queen...Backyard Bottomslash." L replied and then quickly sputtered out a few more and took in one last large breath before settling back to his previous breathing habits.

"This is easier. Right? Let's keep this up, _Ryuzaki_. Who was the killer?"

"Beyond Birthday."

"Strange names, aren't they?"

"Aliases. Most of them..." L murmured, leaning back into the chair slowly.

"Like Ryuzaki?" The man joked back, but it sounded like anything but a joke, "So we've established you're L. We'll continue."

"That shouldn't be sufficient proof..." L replied, "You should be asking me more...but then...you knew I was L." L reflexively attempted to bring his thumb to his mouth, but finding the restraints were still tight, he settled for a curious expression, "Didn't you?"

"I'm asking the questions." He said it like he was teaching a child the sky was blue and that life was nothing but pain.

Nothing but miserable pain.

"Continue, then. Please."

L looked ahead blankly, suppressing the shivers that wracked his body as best as possible, waiting for that voice to come back again: a voice that sounded like it'd seen all the pain the world had to offer and had ate it hungrily. Consumed every piece of hate and anger thrown his way until it had become a part of him, and he'd grown an immunity to all feeling left in the world.

"Your _name_." He paused only for a second, waiting for the start of any reply, and after a second, decided to follow with, "In full."

L closed his eyes.

"This is only the beginning." The man begun, "And what I did before? That wasn't exactly what I consider torture, _L_...Torture is an art form. Interrogation is for the weak. But you're strong, aren't you? Strong minded. Yes. Of course you are. _Breaking you,_ like they call it, will be difficult. But...not impossible."

He was close now.

L could feel it.

He silently prepared himself.


	2. P1: Chapter 2

**2**

* * *

L listened to the silence. The silence was something he was used to and darkness was something he was very well-acquainted with just as well. Many nights were followed with silent deductions, silent pondering, dark rooms and dark killers. Most would assume he'd be well equipped to handle this sort of thing. That he'd be well adjusted enough to be able to take the blackness blocking his vision and the silence surrounding him, save for the low humming of the lights. But even the lights were fading into just background noise.

However, his sight was one of his few weapons. He had a limited arsenal, but what he did have was ultimately and immensely powerful. Being stricken of his sight was not something he was well-acquainted with or adjusted to and in fact, it was beginning to bother him like no one would ever have believed.

He always had his eyes. His twenty/twenty vision watching every fleeting criminal, every twitching finger, every darting eye. Inspecting every body hair, every clothing fiber.

Now he was blinded. Limited to only scent and sound. And now noise was gone and there was nothing. It was as though he entered purgatory, feeling nothing but the deep aching freeze clinging to his skin that was burrowing itself down into his bones.

He shivered.

"Your questions are giving.." He paused to swallow his stutter, he couldn't let him know the cold was bothering him. Not now. "..me the impression you might be Kira." L relented, "I'd put it at about fifteen percent now."

It had gone silent around a minute ago and L could hear the heart monitor beginning to beep faster, insistent and in his ear. The noise was erratic, screaming in his ear: he knows you're panicking...you're letting him know...

Calm. He had to be calm. It was his only leverage.

The heart monitor died back down to it's dull rhythmic beep. He tried not to think about the impending danger or focus on the fact he could feel him standing there over his shoulder.

"That's not very high." The gravel voice replied from somewhere across the room.

L released a shaky breath and turned his head to his left.

Then who was it just behind him? Was it a person? Or was it an object, maybe? It was possible, if he was well-versed in the art of _'advanced'_ interrogation, that he placed something there to throw him off. And if that was true: he'd succeeded.

L swallowed this defeat.

He closed his eyes against the wet material swaddled around his head, focusing solely on his heart beat. It needed to be _slower_. _Slower_.

"I'm not Kira." He replied, "I realize that probably does little to assuage your fears. But I don't plan on killing you...My _only_ goal is to make you answer my questions. And this is your last chance, speaking of: Your name?"

L bit his lip.

Besides his suspicion of the man before him, there was also the grave possibility this wasn't only being videoed for the task force. For all he knew, this feed could be in the hands of any number of people. And then of course, there was his sustaining suspicion of Light. Though it seemed he'd been controlled by Kira previously and that he was no longer a puppet, he also knew there was always the possibility Kira, or Kira's powers, could simply control him again and then he'd have his name in his arsenal.

No, it was too risky, he had to find another way to-

Footsteps sounded but he couldn't see where they led to or where they came from. His senses were thrown to the wind again and he hurriedly tried to regain them. Objects were being dragged again. Scratchy squealing noises surrounded him as they echoed from wall to wall. He looked around blindly before settling to focusing his gaze on the light of the television. He couldn't see anything, of course, but it could be his constant. When he got thrown off, rather than panic, he decided, he'd look back to the television and regain himself.

 _Beepbeepbeep...beepbeep...beep...beep..._

His heart rate slowed down again and he breathed. Something was about to happen. But what? He needed his sight, he needed-...Cold air rushed down his back.

He shivered against the water that was slowly crystallizing on his skin and something climbing up from the depths of him: fear.

He, of course, had been lectured on the ways of interrogation. But this wasn't an interrogation, so his studies did little to help him anticipate what might come next. He'd also been taught how to psychoanalyze and it had additionally, always been a gift of his. But with only his voice to base any deductions off of made it increasingly difficult to-

A hard slam against his face broke his thoughts. When had he moved in front of him? How had he not felt it?

"...un..creative..." L murmured through heavy breaths.

"That was another _warning._ You're not going to like what comes next. _Your name."_ His voice was calm but contained a dangerous edge and L knew he meant every word of this warning. But half of him still, was curious to know what could come next. He knew the feeling was wrong, but it was the way he'd always been. He'd always had a deep rooted thirst for knowledge of anything in the unknown.

It was partially the reason he couldn't stand the blind folds and the little bits of silence.

But self preservation came rising within him. He needed to get out: and in his current position, the only thing he could do to try and escape was figure out _who_ it was holding him captive and why. It was his only chance and strategy at that point.

"...Tell me...yours." He panted, coughing against the pain throbbing across his face and penetrating deep in his cheekbones. He could feel the swelling beneath his skin just as he suddenly felt the silent man's presence directly in front of him. Where he'd been before where he could've given him the punch across the face before he wasn't sure. He could smell his cigar smoke clinging to his clothing. He could almost taste his aftershave.

He positioned his face upwards.

 _'C'mon. Come closer. Let me see your face.'_

"That isn't the game, L."

He breathed a small sigh. Maybe the torture he had planned for him would give him a moment to at least _think._ He needed a second to just _think._ He felt his body, entirely of it's own doing, begin to shiver again from the freezing air. The water clinging to his hair more than likely had frozen between the strands. His lips were chapped and quite possibly blue with the numbness he felt.

"Cold?" There was a dark humor residing in that single word, a humor that was sharp and so, so right.

"This won't break me." L responded lowly, "I've had worse."

"You'd be surprised how many give up right about here. They feel their skin start to freeze? They give in, crying. Begging. Between you and I...and _them_..." L figured he must have motioned towards the TV because he detected a sudden movement in front of him, "...I wish you'd be like them. You don't want this, son. Lemme tell you."

"Tell me _your_ name." L said calmly, biting back any shivers that threatened to compromise his voice.

"...Fine." He replied plainly. L listened to his footsteps cross the room. The clicking of his hard bottomed shoes.

Expensive, but worn- Where was he going?

"My name? They call me Method. Because _my_ method's the only one that works."

And with that the lights flickered off all around him, the door slammed shut and the only sound left was his own heavy breaths and the beeping of the heart monitor escalating beside him.

Blackness, silence.

His skin was numb. His brain was racing.

"Mr. Yagami...? Light...?"

The screen was on, he could see a faint glow through the blackness, but no reply came back.

"...Watari?"

Silence.

Complete black silence.

L released a couple breaths and swallowed. The beeping was escalating and he didn't care. There was no one around except behind him, but he'd deduced by this point it was a _thing_ , not a who. No humanly smell came from it: not a musk, not a perfume, nothing.

He fought against the restraints in rhythm to the beeps, grunting against the pain that rose from his tearing frozen skin. He stopped quickly.

What was he doing?

He could manage this. Light was quite capable of leading the task force, he reasoned, and Watari would certainly not allow this to go on for longer than another couple of hours. He had every genius mind in the world at his fingertips. Certainly a few lesser-geniuses at Whammy could add up to himself and even beyond. And Watari knew every one of his enemies just as well as he did.

They'd find him. They'd solve this. And he had to remain calm: it was his only task. Remain calm. Attempt to extract information when possible. That was all he had to do.

Keep calm.

* * *

L waited continuously.

If there was any chance that the task force could still hear him, he thought it'd be a good measure to let them in on any ideas he might have on _who_ this man could be, but nothing came to mind and so, he sat in silence. Never ending, continuous silence.

For upwards of eight or ten hours, he sat there. Silent. Frozen. Shivering. In darkness, blackness, utter solitude.

He thought for a second it was probably befitting that this be his torture. The thing that had bothered him least in life, was bothering him most at this point.

L tried to figure out the time of day, but it was impossible. He thought it could be morning, but then again, he thought it also could be afternoon. Time had drifted by steadily and without warning.

He knew this was a form of psychological torture.

L swallowed the defeat for the second time: it was working. And how could he fight the effects? To be left in the unknown...it was the one thing he'd never been able to stand.

A door creaked open. He turned his head to greet the sudden noise and listened as the door closed behind them. The lights flickered on around him, the familiar low hum came back around him.

"Good. You're awake." The voice, that reminded him of tar, was back again. Filling the room with cigar smoke and another scent... something clean...soap.

L thought about a warm shower. Standing beneath scalding waters, feeling every burn bring his skin back to life-Something gripped the back of his seat, dragging it backwards.

"Name?"

He closed his eyes against the stiff material.

He expected a pause. Maybe another punch. Another warning and a maybe a bucket of ice water.

But it was instant.

The back of the chair hit the floor and he found himself laying flat, still attached to the chair, his legs and arms attached to it's own. Within seconds, his shirt was cut down the middle. He could hear the scissors quick at work. The two halves were pulled from his body and L did his best to manage his heart rate which was escalating quick.

Nothing could distract him from the quick and dexterous fingers.

All the time, wondering when and how and what.

He dry swallowed and released a shaky breath. Over and over again until the pain finally came.

Something hot and burning tore through his skin and melted it away from his body. The shower was no longer a fantasy. It was reality and he quickly realized how stupid his dream had actually been.

For a third time, L swallowed defeat. And he'd never swallowed defeat so many times in a single day from a single person. His torso was screaming and so was he. He screamed, like he'd never done before. Full, lung-emptying yells filled the room. Echoing off every wall.

The burning hot liquid ripped through his torso and with every breath he drew, the skin stung worse. A chemical smell made it to his nose and he realized rather quickly: it hadn't been boiling water.

Freezing water followed and the burning escalated. His breath drew in so fast and so hard, his lungs hurt as they filled and his shoulders convulsed against the agony.

"It was only a phial full." The man reasoned, no mirth laced his words this time, "But I have more. Now: your _name_."

L swallowed.

It was at the tip of tongue, threatening to escape his lips with every breath he drew and released. But he held it back, biting his tongue and closing his eyes beneath the material. He shook and pleaded internally with whoever would listen: to please, let Watari find him. He had nothing. He had absolutely nothing...

Leverage? He had none. Escape plan? Nothing. Deductions, clues? Nothing, nothing, _nothing_.

"This is ridiculous, kid." He heard him take a few steps and breathed in as steadily as he could. His heart was racing, proven by the almost concerning noise the monitor was making. He thought for a second that it had flat lined with the urgency of it's continuous beeping.

A high pitched noise suddenly broke the beeping and he focused his senses on it. As the sound faded, gradually, voices could be heard.

"Ridiculous? It certainly _is_ ridiculous!"

It was Soichiro.

"You have to stop this! Tell us what you _really_ want." Soichiro's voice yelled urgently, his breaths coming in between every other word with increasing anxiety, "Money? Is that it? You want money?"

"For now, I want his name."

"They don-...They don't know my..." L's voice faded, he couldn't even work up the strength to form words. His mind was at the brink of white hot nothingness and his heart was in his throat.

 _Calm._ Had to be _calm._ He was drifting. In and out of consciousness. His eyelids begun to fall. Any normal human would have given in to the immense agony, let themselves submit to the dark numbness of sleep. But he couldn't...he wouldn't...

"You're positive? None of them?"

 _Watari_.

"Watari." L regained himself half way, "Do _not_ give him my name. Do you understand? No matter what he does-"

"Watari?" Method interrupted, "Ok, Watari. I know you're the older gentleman there. Watari: you can listen to the boy here..." He cleared his throat, "...but you'll be witnessing some more of what you just saw..."

There was a brief period of silence, "Please...don't hurt him any more. Ryuzaki...I'm not sure I can...let anymore of this-"

L felt the battle beginning to slide down the wrong side of the hill. His little footmen were retreating, the opposing men were invading by boat and by the thousands. They were raising their flags. He could see himself, bleeding, defeated. Dead.

"Watari. No. No, I will be _fine_. Do not give him my name. He could be...working with..." His voice lost itself in his throat. He didn't have the strength to yell anymore.

Determined footsteps returned to his side and threw the chair back into an upright position.

"Oh...God...Chief, I-..." Matsuda mumbled in what L instantly recognized as distress.

"Ryuzaki..." Soichiro lost any further words in his throat and fell silent.

The blackened charred voice was biting, defensive and angry now, "Do you see this?" Method slapped a hand onto L's shoulder, receiving a pitiful sort of scream, so soft it was like a whisper. " Is this what you want, _Watari?_ "

"Ryuzaki...please, give him your name."

"We can cut the feed if you'd like, Ryuzaki. But you have to give him your name." Light came in next, "You can't handle much more of this, Ryuzaki. Just listen to yourself." The words came in as hard facts. There was something akin to grief mingled between his syllables, but L brushed it off quickly.

The pain, however, he noted, must have been a good indicator of how it truly looked.

"C'mon, L. Give me your name, and I'll make the pain go away. How about that, kiddo? I'll make you pain free."

The pain...the pain was on the verge of unbearable.

Instead of getting used to it as he'd suspected he would, it felt as though it was steadily getting worse. It was though his brain couldn't registered anything but noise and pain. Noise and pain surrounding him. Darkness, blackness, pain, screaming, yelling.

 _B_ _eepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep._

 _You're defeated, you're done, he won this round._

 _Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep._

Screaming in his ear.

" _Name_."

There was, for a moment there, beautiful silence. Blooming, hot, hating, ugly pain. Dark, bleek, blackness.

Defeat...

He wouldn't swallow it again.

"...No."

"Ryuzaki! You have to stop this!" Matsuda yelled, screaming and begging and-...

He felt the familiar burning against his shoulders within seconds. Eating its way through layers and layers of skin. He released another scream. It was broken. Charred like Method's voice. It was nearly gone.

He had little scream left.

But he'd scream until he couldn't anymore.

He wouldn't give in...

L didn't give in...

This was rule...law...

"Stop this, please!" Watari cried out.

L had never heard the level of desperation in his voice that he heard now. Not once in all of his twenty-three years had he once heard the tone in his voice he heard now and it scared him.

It terrified him.

He shook and convulsed in the agony as the burning spread across to the other shoulder and down his back.

With that, he heard the footstep. Hard pieces of leather hitting against hard cold cement. The door slammed.

But the volume was still on, evidenced by Matsuda's steady pleading and the glow that remained through his blindfold.

His head dropped to his chest.

Exhaustion was taking over but pain was ebbing away at the chance of any rest. His wrists shook in the restraints and his ankles pressed against the restraints.

Couldn't he have taken the blindfold off? Couldn't he have...couldn't he have...?

He closed his eyes.

There wasn't a difference but it gave him solace.

"Ryuzaki?...Ryuzaki?"

His heart begun to slow.


	3. P1: Chapter 3

**3**

* * *

L woke with large, deep breaths. The pain washed over him like a tsunami. His eyes were wide, hands clutching the arms of the chair and nails digging deep within the wood. He cringed against the sudden oncoming pain.

"Ryuzaki?"

He grunted a little and made a throaty noise that Matsuda took for an affirmation that he was awake. He felt every inch of his raw skin; it was as though he'd been skinned alive like a potato. He opened his eyes to be met with the material again.

Nothing.

Blackness.

Though he wouldn't show it and never admit it, even to himself, he couldn't take the darkness much longer. The effects were wearing him down.

The insistent beeping, the crackle of empty air, the blackness surrounding him. His sight was the only thing that could save him at this point. His strength and health were gone, his mind was on the very edge. He _needed_ his eyes.

"Ryuzaki's awake, Chief." This came from Aizawa, and L realized quickly the small nasal-like voice he'd heard in the background, had probably been him. He thought maybe it could've been Mogi, but his mind had slipped and forgotten about Aizawa.

He'd come back only recently, to help them with the Yotsuba group. So it could be it'd simply slipped his mind: but that wasn't him. He didn't forget. He was losing it. He hadn't been functioning properly since the moment he woke in this room which led him quickly to a single conclusion: he'd been drugged. Method must have somehow drugged him in the head quarters and now-

"Wha-?" Soichiro mumbled, " ...Ryuzaki! Ryuzaki, are you alright?"

L gripped the seat's handles again, curled his toes and grit his teeth. He could hear their words. But they meant nothing to him. The language was distant...foreign..and it sounded all like gibberish.

Pain...pain... _pain_.

Distraction, he needed a distraction. He wouldn't give in. Rule, law. He would not give in to the pain or Method's demands. At least not until he figured him out. Who he was, why he was doing this.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

Ok then. He needed to figure this out _now_.

"He knew about..." He paused, taking in two quick breaths and releasing a small grunt, "...my last case...which isn't public record."

"What _was_ your last case about, Ryuzaki?"

This came from Light and it brought him a sense of great relief to know he was still there among the others. His mind was more capable than his at solving this at the moment: he was distracted, blinded, and dulled to a sphere.

"...It was a personal case." L replied lowly with a sort of darkness to his tone that matched his surroundings, "His name was Beyond Birthday. He was someone I grew up with and instead of focusing on doing good he focused on being my greatest adversary...He started killing at fifteen but I didn't have enough evidence to prove anything then." He took in a sort of shaky breath, "At any rate...he took me head on in Los Angeles just over a year ago...The murders were solved alongside the FBI agent Naomi Misora. He was arrested after a failed suicide attempt and later killed...by Kira..."

 _Strawberry jam lined the bathroom walls. Smeared in the grout and across the white tiles. He stared at the red sticky coagulated substance._

 _Behind him there was a cackling: a laughter like death._

 _"C'mon, Ellie. It's funny."_

 _In red streaks his name had been written in full across the tiles. Beneath, there was a date._

 _L looked back to him. B gave him a smirk. His laughter was deep in his throat, escaping in little chuckles. But there was black anger in those eyes. Something was on fire inside him._

 _"Now you see what I see: It's funny."_

"Do you think that he was hinting at his identity with this specific case?" Light asked, "I've been thinking that he might have a personal attachment to one of your cases: that would certainly explain his knowledge of them. Maybe this is some kind of redemption for him?"

"He doesn't seem emotionally driven." L replied numbly, "...but I'm not thinking very straight at the moment, it's difficult to re-"

"Ryuzaki?"

L silence and looked up despite the fact it did nothing. He was simply staring at the glow he still only guessed was the television screen, "Huh?"

"You're speaking...something _else_. French?"

L retracted his mind and thought back on the words that had just left his mouth. He'd been speaking...French?

"I apologize. I...I'm not thinking straight...It'd be best if I was just quiet at this point.."

"No, Ryuzaki. It's ok. We understand. Is there anything else you noticed about him?"

"Details...Small details..." He furrowed his brow against the burning, "He told me his name was Method."

"Yes, we heard." Soichiro replied, "I believe he muted us on your end, but we were able to hear."

"Oh." L replied back after a moment, the pain was rising into his head making his face go red and his heart rate escalate. He bit the inside of his cheek to distract himself and then swallowed, "...Something he said seemed strange...He said _they_ call him Method because his is the only one that works...but _who_ is it that calls him Method then? His employers most likely..." His voice deepened and he took in another breath, attempting to steady his heart beat, "...There is a chance he's only being paid to do this. He seems to be hesitant, but there's some drive there as well..."

"Ok.." Matsuda said, "But then, who would pay someone to do...this?"

L could only smirk in his mind. His teeth were too firmly clamped to the back of his bottom lip to change his expression. When his skin screamed, he bit down harder until he tasted blood.

He released long enough to reply, "Many..." And then firmly bit back down.

"You said you noticed some details. Tell us. Anything might help." Light asked the question with hesitation, attempting to get L to continue speaking.

After a second or two, when the pain begun to fade enough, L released his lip, "...Based on his voice alone, I'd place him at forty-five. A drinker and most certainly a smoker...His shoes are expensive but old. He has enough hesitance in everything he does to convince me he's being paid to do this: I'd say he's a professional, but a _new_ one. More than likely? A former detective. " he swallowed, taking in a shaky breath, "However, he could afford new ones, if he's being paid to do what he's doing now, these kind of services don't come cheap: but he doesn't. Why? More than likely, he has a sentimental attachment to them. So there's a possibility he could be a widower." He gripped the chair's arms a little tighter, " _Further_ , he does this for money. Cut and _dry_. This doesn't fuel him emotionally or even entertain him. I suppose you could even say...I trust him: He's telling the truth. He really _does_ just want me to answer these questions." His voice, soft but dry and weak fell off into an almost lethargic tone, "...But without a wife: why would he turn to crime for money...? Kids, maybe..."

"That would narrow the list considerably, Ryuzaki...This is good, isn't it?" Soichiro's voice convinced L he was more than just confused, and why shouldn't he be? His deduction sounded beautifully precise: like the way it always sounded when L had the perfect name for the perfect answer.

"Except that..." L swallowed hard, he needed water again, "...no one comes to mind...that matches _that_ description..."

"Watari, maybe you could look into some names-"

"Matsuda, I assure you I have looked into a _very_ lengthy list of names." Watari replied quietly.

"Watari?" L said his name as though he'd forgotten his presence had ever existed. His voice softened. "Watari, if he starts to antagonize you again, please make sure you leave from the screen."

"I'm afraid..." Watari begun, "...I won't be able to do that, Ryuzaki..."

"Watari, you have to _promise_ me you won't tell him anything. For any reason at all. Trust me, I-"

He heard the door click open and it's heavy metallic groan echo as it was pushed open. It closed thunderously with a sound that told him: It was time to begin.

He listened to it close shut and the hum of the lights above met his ears. The hard, familiar, clicking of shoes crossed the room.

"Name." Was the only word that exited his mouth, grainy and hard against his ears.

He sat still, focusing on keeping his heart to nothing but a low steady rhythm.

"...no."

"There won't be any games today, _Ryuzaki_." The name was spat and L could hear the difference in his personality like he could see the difference between black and white when he wasn't blindfolded. He could feel him behind him. It wasn't the object. It was human flesh. Cigar smoke, clean soap, rough hard breath right down his neck, "I'll make a little trade: Give me your _name_ and I'll give you some _pain killers._ How's that sound?"

He replied with his silence.

Method replied with a heavy breath down his neck. There was a few short moments of silence where they both were mentally testing the other. Waiting quietly for a reaction: a jolt of fear to electrocute either party.

"Undo him." He said, voice more blackened than it had ever been.

More footsteps sounded near the door and L sat up a little straighter: there were others? He'd only given that possibility a ten percent chance and though he'd always believed in preparing for _any_ situation, no matter how slim the chances, how could he have prepared for this? He'd only silently hoped it'd been a one man operation.

From the sound of it, there were only two, but he instantly froze. Undo him? Undo his restraints? If it hadn't hurt to move and breathe, he might've been able to take them. There was still the possibility that maybe...just _maybe_...he could. What did he have to lose? He'd give it his best shot and if he failed-

"Hey, what is that? What're you doing?" Light yelled into the camera.

A hard pinch in his forearm sent the electricity down his spine he was sure Method had anticipated.

A needle.

Drugs.

"What...did you do...?" L whispered.

He felt simultaneously their quick, dexterous fingers moving about his wrists and ankles and just as quickly, he was shoved from the chair. His equilibrium was gone in a single instant and he was faced with the floor. The world swam around him and he felt his body begin to paralyze. He was panicking, he could hear it in the heart monitor. He couldn't move. Couldn't move? He couldn't move.

He heard the chair being pushed away, knocked over, thrown.

After just a second of anticipation, there was a splitting crack that hit and snapped across his back. He released a gasp. His heart lurched and leaped. The pain was unbelievable. A hard lash against his fresh raw skin and he could feel every bit of it and could do _nothing_ to prevent it.

He was worthless. Lifeless. A husk on the floor.

"Gimme a _name_ , kid!"

"...N-... _No_ "

Another hard crack against his back and this time, he didn't bite down or hold it back: he screamed to the concrete floor.

"Stop! Please, for the love of God!" it was Watari, begging like he'd _never_ done before.

"No, Watari...Watari please." L said swallowing back his cries and screams, "Watari, _no_."

"Give me his _name_ Watari." Method replied back, hard gravel against burnt bark urging him to make the decision Watari would have given in forever ago had it not been for L's pleads.

"Ryuzaki..."

"No, Watari... _no!_ "

A man, he wasn't sure which, drug him up by his hair. L released a breath that sounded almost unhuman; like a cross between a groan and a yelp, it expressed the notion of pain very well.

"On your knees." Method said, "Stay now..." He warned lowly, but L couldn't and so another hand took Method's place, "You _name_."

It would be so easy. To just give him his name. To just say the three little words on his lips. But no.

No.

He couldn't give in.

Not yet. He had to get the blind fold off...he had to see his face...He was close now, he knew he was.

"...no."

There was another sharp whip across his back and then in quick succession two more came. He felt the blood trailing its way down his back, the fresh burns were re-awakened and thoroughly salted. And there wasn't enough breath in his body to release anymore yells or screams.

He felt himself teetering, the world was flying around on it's axis the way his top spun at Whammy's House. Fourteen years old and he remembered. He remembered spinning a top on his textbook beside B who watched it with a little grin.

 _"Bet I can make it spin faster, Ellie."_

"Your _name_."

The hand released his hair and he fell. What felt like a ten story drop lasted only seconds and he was on the ground again, right cheek against the concrete, trying to catch his breath. His burned skin heated the frigid flooring and his sweat trickled it's way down his body, into the floor's pore-like openings.

The heart monitor was yelling: _stopstopstopstop!_

There was a small, brief, reprieve and then he was back up onto his knees, held up by his hair like a little ragdoll. He was limp in Method's hands. He couldn't keep his balance if he tried.

L felt him hoist him into a standing position.

"C'mon, kid. Your name. Just give me your _fucking_ name."

"...My name?..."

There was a moment of silence. The low hum of the lights and the anxious breaths on the television were the only things that L could hear.

"My name is _L._ And _justice_ will prevail... "

"...Then I've got no other choice. _No_ other choice." His voice held the most regret L had ever heard out of a criminal with the upper-hand, it usually took a _'guilty!'_ verdict to bring them to this, "Kyba. You've got him for _thirty minutes_. Got that? _Thirty_ minutes."

"Who..Who is that Chief?" Matsuda whispered, "Hey, hey who're you giving Ryuzaki to? Hey you assholes!"

L felt the world spin as he was thrown from Method's hands to hands that were three times bigger, thicker, and much too inviting as they grabbed him.

Into his ear, the man he assumed was Kyba, whispered, "... _Thirty minutes_..." and then, like a sack of potatoes, he was hoisted up over his shoulder, arms hanging down his back.

He was too exhausted to hear what the others were yelling through the television. All he heard was the screeching flat-line of the heart monitor as it tore away from his chest.

He closed his eyes, feeling his body go numb inside.

 _"...Bet I can make it spin faster...Ellie"  
_


	4. P1: Chapter 4

a/n: Try listening to what I wrote to: Mattia Cupelli- Love & Loss (works especially well in flashback scenes.)

* * *

 **4**

* * *

 _Winter._

 _The snow was coming down in heavy sheets, quite literally blanketing the ground in white fluffy wonder. L watched the skies with half-lidded eyes, observing the grey clouds crumpled together like lead stained paper._

 _The whiteness of the paper bled from each cloud down to the Earth. Spilling it's purity down to the Earth where it would pile up until it melted away and died. The 'blanketed' grounds gave most a pleasant idea of warmth, but L saw what it really was._ _Wasn't it so_ human _to use a word that gave the idea of warmth and comfort for layers of frozen debris?_

 _"Ryuzaki...it's freezing out here. You should at least have a jacket on-..you're not wearing shoes? Ryuzaki, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to kill yourself."_

 _L turned around slowly. That voice. The voice of the boy who he'd just previously been thinking over. Could he be? A killer of all things? Something inside told him yes without a doubt. His deductions continuously lead to him without any faults or fails._

 _Light Yagami._

 _His nose was tipped with a soft red hue, the color of twinkling Christmas lights, but other than that, his persistent_ _perfection maintained. His brown eyes were looking at him with concern, but it could be real? A few days ago he would have said no. He would have looked into those eyes and disregarded every crinkle of his nose and every smile he offered. Every emotion he ever displayed was an act: a very good performance, of course, by all means give him a round of applause. However..._

 _Now? L was unsure._

 _Looking at him now: could he really be a killer?_

 _"It's below freezing out here, Ryuzaki."_

 _Ryuzaki narrowed his eyes. He knew that. He had, after all, been doing this since he was young. Being wrong, dumb or slow would ultimately result in punishment should it effect anything badly. In this case, it had costed a life._

 _Naomi Misora was dead._

 _Was he trying to kill himself? No, not really. But was he trying to numb the eating guilt with sufficient punishment? Yes, there was no doubt._

 _He'd heard about her fiancé dying and it'd come as both a surprise and a personal blow to him. It'd lit a fire beneath him. Naomi Misora, a woman he personally felt he was somewhat indebted to, had lost her fiancée due to_ his _incompetence._

 _Due to his inability to prove Light Yagami was Kira._

 _Now? She was dead. For trying to find Kira herself. And ultimately, whose fault was that? L could only come to one conclusion, one single deduction._

 _L's brow furrowed slightly and he turned back around to look at the pouring snow coming down in great thick heavy clumps. Purity falling, falling from the skies. Dark grey stretched above._

 _He turned around one last time and looked into Light's eyes and where a darkness had been that he'd recognized in one particular friend before, there now resided genuine concern._

 _No, the Light he was looking at now could certainly not be him._

 _"I suppose you're right..." L replied quietly, "...let's go back in."_

* * *

 **4**

* * *

"I don't mind the burns, you know.."

L opened his eyes slowly.

Still, black darkness, but he hadn't expected anything different.

At times he wasn't even sure that he'd opened his eyes at all and had to blink, feel his eyelashes against the cloth, to be sure that he'd opened them all the way. He blinked rapidly this time, just to be sure.

"...I've got pains too, ya' know?...Broke my back once...And when it hurts, I just take these little white pills. A friend of mine gave me 'em."

Who, L asked himself, was that speaking and what is it he was saying? It wasn't Method. He remembered a name...Kyba. This man sounded like he had half the intelligence and a sort of disposition in his voice that made you instantly uneasy. His voice was off, muttering in between words things he couldn't make out or understand.

But maybe that was just the side effects of whatever Method had drugged him with. He decided whatever he'd used was quick: both to work and wear off, but the new coldness enveloping him seemed to also be some sort of side effect and _this_ was certainly not wearing off. In fact, it was getting worse. He felt his whole body shiver against the cool air surrounding him.

"You know _words_...don't you?" He gave a sarcastic little laugh.

L tipped his head upwards in acknowledgment, "I'm afraid I'm unable to...focus...at the moment... _Water_ would help."

There was a few moments of silence and then he felt those same hands grabbing him forcefully again, "You're in pain. Lemme make it better."

L struggled against his grip, but his hands were too large, his strength far exceeded his own, especially in his current condition, and his fingernails were digging into his newly exposed skin making him almost too nauseous to retain consciousness. He could feel the thick hands surrounding his arms, wrapping around them with his sausage-like fingers. They were more effective than the restraints on the chair because every time he even budged, his grip got harder and more painful.

He stilled.

"No, all I need...is some water..."

"No. Look, you're gonna wan'em, L. They'll make this feel _real_ good." His voice was shaky now, as though he was anticipating something.

"This? What do you mean th-?"

Two small bitter fragments and salty skin entered his mouth. His fingers pushed the two pills all the way down until he gagged against them. He swallowed after a brief struggle and took in large shaky breaths as the man quickly released him.

"What was that...?" L choked out his words, releasing them just below a whisper as his pupils constricted beneath the mask swaddled around his eyes.

Fingers brushed against his cheeks, gliding upwards slowly towards the blindfold. L's heart beat quickened, his breath becoming rattling shaky releases.

"Method told me not to take this off but...seems I just can't help myself."

For the first time since he'd been held captive, L feared his sight. Emotions, however, rarely got in the way of reason and reasoning told him he needed his sight back. It was truly and utterly his only and last defense.

He leaned into Kyba's hands, allowing him to move the blind fold up and over his stiff icy hair. L closed his eyes against the sudden light, piercing his eyes. He blinked and held them closed tight for a moment before attempting to open them again.

"Let me see them, _L_. Let me see those pretty eyes of yours."

He blinked a few more times before he felt his hands grab a hold of his head again, pushing him back against the wall. His calloused thumbs pulled his eyelids up and open and as L's eyes struggled to focus in the dim lighting, he looked into the man's face before him.

"Let me see them!" His voice turned hard and maniacal, screaming as though the devil had suddenly possessed both his body and voice.

L shook against his grip as he investigated his eyes. Grey shaking irises greeted him as the pupils begun to slowly grow in size. "Wha's...wha's..." L felt himself slipping faster and faster, his body beginning to relax in his hands.

He looked down to his hands as they lowered themselves to his legs.

The coldness...

...it wasn't cold, he was naked.

He looked back up, his eyes full of fear. His face was white, bright, flat like a moon. He licked his lower lip, right above his black goatee and shook out his long hair with the shining bald spot. His skin was ruddy and worn. He was somewhere in his thirties, but it was obvious life had not been easy for this man and it was also obvious, he'd made it difficult for himself.

His gold rimmed glasses shone in the light, his eyes behind them showing their hunger and their lust. They rose to meet his eyes again after searching his body. His smile came after.

L looked into those eyes back and felt bile rise in his throat, his hands shaking, his stomach churning. He felt burning in his nose. He saw evil looking straight into his soul, and his soul cried out to deaf ears.

Thirty minutes. Alone with this man, for thirty minutes.

He closed his eyes, wishing the blindfold was back on.

He didn't have any weapons...who was he kidding? His _only_ hope was the others-

Kyba grabbed him and though L pushed against him as strong as he could, his best attempts were weak at best. He threw him onto a firm but cushioned surface that he recognized, after a moment, as a mattress. L felt his hands snaking up his body and he bit his bottom lip, squeezing his eyes shut. He shook and gagged in his throat as his stomach flipped with ever touch.

Lethargically, he attempted to push himself up from the bed but Kyba, as he was called, instantly pushed his face back down into the musty mattress. He cried out finally and yelled in desperation. There were no words, just noise. Noise to let _himself_ know he was alive, this was real, this was happening.

This wasn't a dream, a nightmare. Watari would not be there to turn on the lights, shake him awake and tell him: _'It's ok.'_

His hands reached his neck and made it their way into his hair, grabbing a fistful and tugging.

L's heart was racing, beating up into his mouth, his body quivering and seizing as his fingers trailed across his burns. It no longer hurt, but it left a cold trail of a reminder that the man was there...behind him...about to...

He closed his eyes...

He swallowed his defeat...

Again.

He screamed against it. He'd expected it, he knew it was coming within seconds. But the pain that flooded him was unbelievable...unimaginable...

" _And_ a virgin? This's too good to be true...it won't hurt after a while..."

With every slam against his body he released a scream until his screams died down into nothing, into silence and pain and the musty smell of the mattres took over his brain in a giant wave of fog.

He went in and out of consciousness. Between the present and the past, he teetered on the edge and when he closed his eyes, he saw the darkness.

And the longer he looked into the darkness, the longer it looked into him.

And it felt right...

The door opened slowly. He wasn't sure how long it had been; he stopped counting the thrusts when the pain had cut him off from reality. L moved his head towards the noise. Two men stood in the dark doorway. One said something with a voice like asphalt and the other walked in. L didn't even notice when Kyba had stopped but knew he had when he appeared in front of him, zipping his pants and winking and laughing and...

L closed his eyes.

"...I think you see now..." Method said slowly, as though regretful, "...I'll do whatever I have to."

L re-opened his eyes as the other man pulled him to his feet. He focused his gaze on the silhouette of Method as he stepped forward, into the sticky yellow light of the room. L's eyes shakily watched him, his hands in a pair of dark jeans, his eyes cast down to him with a hard look in them: a look that appeared to be forced. His lips were pressed in a line, looking his face over critically with those electric blue eyes.

L looked at him with just as much determination in those few moments of silence. Every fiber in him he wanted to recognize him.

But he didn't.

Staring at each other, taking each other in: L knew what Method's message was.

He didn't care if he saw him, if he recognized him. It didn't matter. It wouldn't matter.

Method moved his hardened gaze over to something across the room and he blearily watched him retrieve his boxers and jeans from a small pile in the corner.

Weapons...?

What weapons...?

* * *

L sat still.

The door closed. The lights were off. The television was no longer a vague glow on the other side of his blindfold, but was very real now. He saw he was in a warehouse, the television was new, and the task force was desperately attempting to get him to speak. All of this he saw.

He didn't observe.

He didn't even try.

"Ryuzaki. I know you can hear us." Light demanded with determination in his every word, "Ryuzaki."

L didn't budge...his mind was focused stoically on the cold trails down his back. It felt as though his fingers were still there, crawling up and down his skin and his hands gripping hard onto his torso and-...

He could, however, see Light from his peripheral vision. He was leaning into the camera, eyes watching him on their own screen. His hair was in a disarray: a sight rarely seen of the younger Yagami. " Ryuzaki, if you don't feel like talking about what happened, at least tell us...Did you recognize Method?"

Kyba's phantom fingers were gripping into his skin. His sweat mingling with his own...his blood mingling with his own...

"Ryuzaki!"

His glasses shone in the light...he remembered his eyes again...the way he looked at him like a new toy, like he was just meat and bones, a mindless, lifeless pleasure object. He looked him up and down like it was everything and all he needed.

And it disgusted him over and over.

He remembered the way it felt...

...nobody forgets their first...

...isn't that what they say?

The heart monitor he'd been reattached to whispered: _stop...stop...please...stop..._

 _Here was the night. It took him whole and ate him alive._

 _Night brought fear._

 _It wasn't the darkness. It wasn't the things that crawled in it either. It was the memories that always,_ always, _came back to him_.

 _Flooding back to him, drowning him, and there was no escape. He was in a sea of black, his reel of memories playing against the grainy dark sky. There was a boat. A boat to safety, security, warmth. But he missed it every time. No one threw him a line._

 _He was drowning again tonight._

 _Letting blackness eat him alive on the rooftop of another hotel, he looked out at this city. A city that never slept, but neither did he. He thought the lights would help him. The flickering movement of cars and the glow of neon signs in the distance._

 _The hotel room gave him an odd feeling. A feeling of containment and imprisonment, like a song bird in a cage._

 _Quillish was here with him on his first case away from the orphanage. Though outside The House, he was Watari. A nickname, the older man had relented once, he'd picked up during grade school in Japan. For them, it was easier to pronounce than Quillish Whammy. He'd been raised on a military base for most of his life, having been the son of an Army doctor. He had experienced, during this time, some of the worst forms of xenophobia he'd ever known._

 _Here was the sky, watching him back. Watching him suffer and watching him curl into himself beneath the giant red sign of the Belmount Hotel._

 _A was dead._

 _B was a murderer._

 _L was just trying to find life inside of himself._

 _He remembered his parent's faces like yesterday. They were busy, but he was loved. They didn't always have time to hear him say he hated school because of the black eyes and scrapes he gained when he went. They didn't always have time to tuck him in and read him stories or make it to every conference or..._

 _...but they always had time to say, 'I love you.'_

 _He remembered A's face. And in fact, it was just yesterday he'd seen it. Looking into his eyes and him looking back with a smile. Snarky and smirky and mirthful. But never was there sadness. Never was there anger. Never was there hatred. Never had there been a monster looking back at him when he looked into those eyes. Not like B. He accepted life just as he did. Life was...darkness...and sadness...and emptiness..._

 _But they were assured of making the world better. They were promised that in the future, they'd be able to serve justice and equality. Make sure no child suffered they way they had. And that gave the both of them hope._

 _B was uninterested in what he considered to be 'tall tales'._

 _Well...L had to ask now, on top of this rooftop in the cold, where was his justice when he opened A's door and found him with a handgun in his palm? When the image of his half-intact head burned into his memory? He screamed Whammy's name in his naivety and inexperience when he saw it: he'd never seen a body in person. He'd never smelled the odor of a freshly murdered corpse._

 _A door opened and a gust of air caught him._

 _There he stood. The man with smoky white hair and the smell of a vanilla hard-candy. He had a confused expression across his face. He looked to him and cocked an eyebrow. "L, what're you doing up here?"_

 _His arms were wrapped firmly around his legs, holding them to his chest and trying to keep himself together. Keep the pieces from falling apart. Watari's footsteps were the only sounds carried by the wind as he walked slowly towards him, hands in his pockets. A habit he himself had started to pick up._

 _Watari watched him cautiously, his eyes studying his hunched body, before he decided to sit beside him. Watari had always been a master in the arts of reading body language._

 _After a moment, his arm fell across his shoulders and L, in his usual manner of doing things, released his legs hesitantly and paused briefly before throwing his arms around the older man._

 _They were weak, but Watari's were strong._

 _Here was his line._

L's eyes didn't leave the floor. It had gone quiet for a few moments when he finally took in a breath.

 _"_ Watari?" His voice was full of hopelessness.

"Yes, Ryuzaki." The voice came instantly and in contrast, was full of hope, "I'm here."

"Could you tell me...what day it is?"

"The twenty-fifth."

"Then...there is a phone call... Please, remember..."

"Ryuzaki..." Watari whispered, eyebrows furrowing at his nonsensical directions, "...Ryuzaki, please, tell us what happened."

L watched the ground, staring at the grey brushed concrete, looking at the stains that spotted and smeared the ground. Patches of blackness and rusty browns that faded into the grey the longer he focused on them...

There was a foggy black darkness that surrounded his brain, a feeling of instability in his chest and in his blood. His breathing was erratic, his heart rate escalating. And he didn't know why, but he though he could feel his body almost begin to decay. He was, for lack of any better word, dying.

He was, without a doubt, dying.

"You killed me."

L looked up, fear and devastation in his eyes. He released a shaky breath, and searched for the source of the voice but his vision was severely out of focus. His pupils had still not returned to normal size: they were the size of olives, almost completely ridding him of irises all together. This was obviously a side effect of Kyba's pills, but he was not listening to the voice of reason inside of him, instead he was listening to this voice now. The voice of A.

"Please...forgive me for my slowness..." L watched the small figure walk forward from the darkness just behind the television screen, "...I was too slow..."

"What do you mean, Ryuzaki?" Light asked cautiously, a careful evenness in his voice, "There's still a way out of this. We'll _get_ you out of this. You know we're doing everything we can to find you, but we still need you. We need you to hold it together for a little longer."

"...B may have done the _nasty deed_. But it was you. You who didn't try and stop him. Why? You knew. You knew and did nothing!"

L's eyes grew wider, his mouth shaking with words he wanted to say but couldn't allow to leave his mouth. "I suppose your right...after all..." L whispered, "...But I suppose...I just didn't want to believe it..."

"It's true, Ryuzaki." Matsuda said quickly, "We _do_ need you. And-"

"No...Matsuda, wait.." Light murmured, watching Ryuzaki intently for a moment. His eyes were focused elsewhere, looking intently at something beyond them, "I don't think Ryuzaki's speaking to _us_."

"Huh?" Matsuda looked to L's panicked gaze to Light, "But then who would he-?"

"Matsuda!" Chief Yagami's fiery gaze fell on him and Matsuda shrunk back, lowering himself and folding his hands together nervously.

"Sorry, Chief..."

L's eyes watched something distantly.

"...I didn't react in time...I wouldn't have let him do it if I knew." L whispered calmly, and then as though it wasn't possible, his eyes grew larger.

Behind the figure of the TV came a much taller one. A hunching man with a large mess of hair and large baggy clothes stood before him. His hands were deep in his pockets. He took another step and both L's voice and breath caught in his throat. The glow of the television consumed his face and there staring back at him were a set of dark red eyes and an eerily familiar expression of deep rooted, dark hatred.

L pulled against the restraints once and then froze again, staring with pure disbelief, "B...? But...how could this be? You died, I saw your body...unless..."

"Ryuzaki, B is dead. Ryuzaki focus on my voice." Watari spoke carefully, every word with a heavy weight attached to it, his eyes boring into the camera with a memory deep inside of them.

Seeing him now: his eyes distant and gone from him, with terror in his every trembling word, reminded him of the boy he'd found. Who feared the world and the future alike. And he remembered promising him all those nights ago, at twelve years old, that he'd protect him. He remembered the years it took to build his trust...he remembered the nights of nightmares and then how much worse they got after B...

But most of all, he remembered the day he first promised him safety and security from the evilness of the world.

 _Twelve years old._

 _The boy sat across from him, looking at him with his dead grey eyes. Whammy looked to him with an expression as dead as his own: an expression that said, you don't have to pretend for me. I understand._

 _'My name is Quillish Whammy...I'm going to bring you somewhere safe. Is that alright with you?'_

 _His unresponsive gaze tested him. He appeared free from all emotion. It was a scary thing to see in a boy so young, but it was not the first time he'd seen it and unfortunately it was also not the last time he'd see it in his lifetime: he knew this._

 _He reached his hands across the table top, placing them on his and something inside ignited within the boy. His eyes gained life. He looked to him as if it was the first time he'd noticed he was there. He watched carefully as the man picked his hands up gently and held them within his._

 _'I'm going to bring you to a place where we can protect you. Where you'll be very_ safe _from the world_ _.'_

 _Quillish had dealt with dozens of orphaned children by this time and if he knew one thing from all these children's crying and emotionless faces alike, it was that they all wanted one thing: security._

 _Even the youngest of them sought nothing but security, normalcy, safety. Love and affection could come later._

 _The boy looked up into the elder's eyes and then after a second, he carefully pulled his hands free without meeting any resistance. His eyes didn't hold any fear or anger: just a thick shielded, well guarded wall._

 _Twelve years old and he looked at him with all the pain the world could offer._

 _'I'm going to be the one who protects you now. I'm going to be the one who keeps you safe.'_

He remembered every case...every tear...every life lost...every victory...

He remembered vividly looking at him now. It was, in a cliché sort of way, watching his life flash before his eyes.

"...hallucinating..." L whispered eyes snapping to the television screen, his voice was helpless, not much different than the voice of his younger self that Watari had remembered.

The door opened again and the hard clicking of shoes alerted L someone else was in the room, but he couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. There was Watari. Smoke-white hair and blue eyes: he watched him carefully, cautiously, with an expression that told him to remain calm, he would be safe.

Lights flickered on and a hand suddenly was in possession of his chin. Method holding it with his thumb and the side of his pointer finger, he pulled his face closer towards him. His eyes told him a story of worry.

"Did Kyba give you something?" He studied L's reaction, but there was none, "Hey: listen to me...did you take anything?" His voice showed through the urgency but L couldn't respond. His tongue was stuck somewhere in the back of his mind, his eyes beginning to roll closed.

He forced him to look up to him, into the light, and he couldn't help but close his eyes in response to the sudden pain of the light flooding his senses. However, Method caught them in those few seconds: his dilated pupils, giant black circles stretching to the entire circumference of his irises, was all the proof he needed.

"Damn it."

"What did he give him?" Light asked, eyes focused on the back of the man's head which was covered in short wavy red hair, thinning and fading to orange with his age, "Hey, answer me!"

He let L go and moved with fervent, determined steps back towards the door, closing it behind himself.

"Ryuzaki! Ryuzaki, speak to us!"Light yelled, "Damn it, what've they done to him?"

"We gotta find him soon, Chief. We gotta find him!" Matsuda yelled worriedly, "Chief, he's gonna-"

"Matsuda, keep quiet!"

Method came back onto the view of field for the task force and was back at his side with a small bottle, tipping his head back, "Drink this." He said quickly, "Come on, drink it, kid."

"Don't do it, Ryuzaki!" Matsuda called out, his mind instantly turning against the man who held a suspicious looking glass in his hand, pressing it forcefully to L's unwilling mouth.

At this, Method turned around with an angry gaze, his bright blue eyes could barely be seen in the dim lighting, but the anger held in them was clear and evident. If it wasn't, for those with poor sight, the anger could certainly be heard in his thunderous voice, "Do you want him to die? Because that's what's going to happen here! He's dehydrated, half-starved, and _overdosing_ right about now you _moron_."

"What is it you're trying to give him?" Light intervened before Matsuda could respond, the look on his face a half-way point between being offended and apologetic.

"Ipecac." Method said lowly, "We gotta get whatever's left of those drugs out of him, then we'll worry about food and water. Get him to drink first though, or he's going to die here."

L shook against the restraints unwillingly, the chains beginning to rattle.

"Do you understand? He's going to _die_ here!"

Ryuzaki could hear words floating around him. Voices that described death and screamed at each other and demanded answers. More answers? He could hear these voices, could hear the anger and pain in their words. But he couldn't make out the words themselves. Their voices encircled him like a wreath of smoke, ambiguous yet burning against his ears.

He just wanted to close his eyes. Protect himself from the visions surrounding him. The voice of B taunting, haunting...

"Ryuzaki, Ryuzaki, _Ryuzaki."_ He said it three times in something akin to a chant, "Oh, Ellie. Give in and let go. Come on, we both know it's better this way. What better way to die? Let your first unsolvable case be your death. It would make sense wouldn't it? Your only unsolvable case actually _killing_ you. Literally." He gave a laugh that reminded L of only one thing.

Death.

Death: it was close...imminent...

He felt himself fading into a grey light, a dark grey was encapsulating him like no warmth ever had. It was a safe feeling, a secure feeling...

"L."

Watari.

His eyelids paused, centimeters from being closed. Slowly, he begun to re-open his eyes, feeling his head being tilted backwards, held firmly by the chin. He could barely hold his heavy lids open, but he did as much as possible; he stared up at the ceiling and waited for the voice to continue.

"L, open your mouth...Drink it."

Something was set in his lap, something hard and hollow and empty...

He opened his mouth. Not to drink anything, but to say something. To ask B a question that he forgot as instantly as he'd formulated it. Instead, something gushed down his throat and the same hand that hand forced this glass bottle into his mouth also shut his mouth closed with a single hand, pushing his bottom jaw against the top. He allowed it to flow down in bitter syrupy waves.

Whatever Watari said...he could trust...

His head was guided towards the hollow object by a single hand and he felt a familiar sickening churning brewing inside him. The smell of the metal surrounding his face stung his nostrils and he lurched forward, emptying all the contents of the stomach into the bucket.

He heaved and gagged again and again, feeling every bit of acid bubble up and out of his stomach.

He gripped the chair again, feeling the waves of nausea begin to cease after a few minutes. The hand guided his backwards again gently. It almost reminded him of Watari. When he was sick, the way he brought his head back up from the toilet bowl.

Water touched his cracked lips and he accepted it instantly, guzzling it until he assumed it was gone and then after a few seconds, he regained some of his energy.

He opened his eyes a little wider. He listened for any instruction, but instead saw a bar being broken into small pieces, it was offered against his lips after a moment. He waited for the voice to tell him that it was ok.

"Eat it, L."

He allowed it to pass and chewing it, found it was some sort of protein bar. He ate all of it piece by single piece and afterwards, Method stood to look over his regaining heart rate. He looked down to see L seemingly asleep and turned back to the screen to face the people of the task force, looking back at him with unsure expressions.

"I didn't mean for that to happen..." He whispered in a surprisingly empathetic tone, "...but if you want to prevent it from ever happening again, you'd tell me his name, Watari."

"If you were sorry, you'd let him go!" Matsuda replied, frustration obvious and evident in his every word, "What did Ryuzaki ever do to you? Whatever it is...it doesn't give you the right to do this!"

Method's eyes didn't change, "I'll do anything to get the answers I need. Anything. Instead of trying to break him out of here, you should focus on getting him to comply with the rules." He paused and turned away, slowly making his way towards the door, "Should something like this happen again... I'd like to let you know... _I warned you_."

With this, he closed the door behind himself and all that was left was L. His head turned downwards, his hair a black mass that concealed his face. They could barely see him in the blackness that had taken over the room.

He sat there in that chair... silent...unmoving...

Darkness swallowing him, taking him whole.

Eating him alive.

* * *

 _This was a long one, admittedly, but not the longest chapter I've ever wrote. I think the longest one I've ever wrote (for any story) was somewhere close to 8,000 words. Haha! This one, if you're curious, was 5,784. ;D_

 _Also, please leave a review if you're enjoying this? You could review with a single: yay or nay if you're pressed on time. I just like to have some kind of human interaction with my readers, you know? Let me know if there's things you'd like to see, or if there were certain thing you liked so I can keep that up. Don't worry about sounding weird: I'm the weirdo here. I promise. Lol!_

 _Hope you enjoyed this chapter and this rare A/N. I don't leave them very often._


	5. P1: Chapter 5

**5**

* * *

He opened his eyes in a mechanical, trained response to the realization he was awake. If it weren't for habit, he'd have sat there, eyes closed, forever. His mind was working double to remember why he was bruised around his hips and why his mouth tasted like a mixture of peanut butter and vomit, but as he did, a sickening feeling returned.

Realization dawned on him.

A realization he wish had just stayed in the dark, beneath his brain somewhere he could never find.

He remembered those two bitter pills. _His_ long black hair, small beady eyes and gold rimmed glasses. _His_ fingers gripping, holding and tugging at his hair. And then his empty hollow screams, released from his throat just to stay conscious.

He remembered-

"L."

He didn't look up, though he recognized the sound of Watari's voice, and his thoughts, that had been rushing and flooding him like rapids, were halted in their tracks.

"I know you're awake..." There was momentary silence, "You have to stop this...you need to tell him your name...the risks are minimal and you know that as well as I do. You said it yourself that you didn't suspect he was Kira. Please...please just tell him your name or allow _me_ to."

"I can handle it..." L whispered back to him, but his voice deceived him and came out sounding as fake as the statement really was.

"If you don't tell him, I'm afraid _I'll_ have to, L. This has gone far enough: they've burned you and drugged you...It's _too much_ for an _old man's_ heart." He gave a weak laugh devoid of any life or humor, "L. L, please...I don't ask for much, you've always made me proud and...I've consistently allowed you to do as you wish. But. But, L, I have to beg you to _please_ stop this before anything more happens."

L gripped the seat's arms in response. Would it be such a bad thing? For him to tell Method his name? Watari was right after all. He'd established Method wasn't Kira, though he couldn't be sure he wasn't hired by him. If Kira somehow had gotten Method's name, he'd be able to force him to do anything really. However, he'd established Kira was part of the Yotsuba group now. Would a Yotsuba member have been able to find his location and also figure out that he was indeed L? They didn't have the resources for that sort of thing: not really. Anyone with enough technological skill and brains wouldn't be caught dead doing business with men like that. L knew those sorts of geniuses that lurked this Earth: and they were all at Wammy's House.

So here again, he found himself doubting that Kira was a practical suspect.

L closed his eyes and unavoidably saw the face behind his eyelids, reminding him of the event he was now attempting to bottle and forget.

The greased white moon staring back at him with a thrill in those eyes that was unnatural, inhuman, monstrous. He swallowed and felt a strong burning in his nose reach back up behind his eyes. He took in a shaking breath and released it. He opened his eyes and looked to the television screen.

"I suppose...you're right...after all." L whispered, his voice barely recognizable through all the quivering in his syllables.

He was met with Watari's eyes and the solitude that surrounded him: the others must have been sleeping, or depending on what time it was, could have been simply attending to personal matters or perhaps...

He felt his mind falter as it turned back to the man with the jet black hair. The bald spot, sparkling with perspiration and dotted with liver spots. His breathing, hiccuping with excitement rang in his ear. The phantom touches and pains returned and he realized something...

He realized, fully and truly, what had been done to him.

What that man, Kyba, had done to him on the musty old mattress in that black little room down the hall.

He'd been... _raped._

"I need to get out, Watari." L whispered quietly, his stomach beginning to clench with nausea.

Watari's eyes glistened, his mustache twitching with anxiety, "I know..." He nodded and swallowed visibly, "I'm doing everything in my power, L." His hushed voice was cracking with every breath he drew; it was a broken mess of held-back tears, "And I _will_ find you. I promise."

L closed his eyes. He saw the man again. Licking his lower lip in anticipation, grabbing and touching and feeling...

Phantom pains ruled him.

His chains rattled, the leather straps bruised him, his eyes were filled with tears.

He'd been raped.

He'd been...

His virginity: a thing he'd never thought too long about or really held with any value, had been taken from him just as fast as his sanity was now. He found himself yearning for both again.

He was pushed off the boat of security, thrown into that black sea where anything could reach up at any moment and take him to the bottomless depths: but that thing had been Kyba and it was swimming with him in his teeth now.

Down, down, down. He was plummeting further down into that abyss and it was surrounding him, filling up his lungs with this black tar.

He'd let that happen to him. He'd let him...

He'd let that man...

A sudden realization that he was filthy, unclean, and more than anything, helpless came to him in a hard blow against his train of thought.

"Watari..." He whispered, stilling his shaking arms and legs, looking into the camera with wide eyes, "...Watari, please get me out of this place...I...I don't believe I'll be able to make it much longer."

His head dipped down in humility as the tears fought against his eyelids. Looking into Watari's eyes almost felt _too_ personal at this point. His irrational side told him to look away so Watari couldn't look down into his eyes and see what Kyba had done to him. So he could never see and know what had happened in that back room.

His eyes begun to close, his breath slowing in little shaking heaves.

Watari spoke to him: promising him he'd find him, promising he was looking and he wouldn't stop...promising...promising...promising...

Darkness.

* * *

 _It was his first night._

 _Darkness rode on the wings of fear and he was swaddled in it, laying in a room that was meant for two. He hadn't minded the loneliness, in fact, he'd welcomed it. He enjoyed the solitude of the room for the first ten minutes, but it was now, staring out into the blackness and knowing how alone he truly was, that sent shivers of realization down his spine._

 _He_ was _all he had in the world._

 _Himself._

 _And what was that truly worth?_

 _He fell asleep with this question in mind and awoke with the answer: it_ wasn't _worth it._

 _He was awoken by his own screams: calling out for his mother behind the flames of the fire that engulfed the room around him. It was hot sprites of light, ignited around him and awakening his every sense. He yelled for her and she yelled back to him, telling him to wait, be still..._

 _He wanted to run through the flames and into her arms, but what he didn't know then was that he'd never be in her arms again._

 _She'd save him, she'd clear a path for him to run...but at the cost of her own life. And even then, twelve years old, he wouldn't accept the injustice the world had served him. He tried to pull her from the flames...he tried but he was too weak, his lungs burned and turned to black...and he screamed her name. Again and again._

 _He woke from the dream with the sound of his own voice, calling out for her. Yelling her name into an empty room with empty silence. His cries became soft and reserved, his breathing erratic, his tears flowing._

 _This was him, twelve years old, just realizing for the very first time: his parents were_ dead _._

 _A hand gripped his shoulder. He hadn't heard anyone enter the room and he didn't welcome the touch openly. He pulled away, knowing who it would be. The man from earlier with smoke white hair and a sweet candy scent. It sickened him: the way he could come in and put the darkness at bay. It was as though it feared him. But then he would leave and let it all come rushing back around him._

 _It sickened him that he had the ability to bring him security and comfort...and take it away just as easily. He'd always been independent and now it felt as though he couldn't breath without someone near._ Him _near._

 _It was the strangest phenomenon, the way this stranger could make him feel safe again. Like nothing bad could ever touch him. He tried to fight the feeling and pretend he hated him...that he couldn't trust him...that he didn't_ need _him._

 _He wanted to fight this darkness, this war, this battle, all alone and push everyone away from him, into the light and leave himself sinking into the black._

 _He pushed the hand away, looking up at him with testing eyes, the tears still falling, his breaths still being forced and swallowed._

 _Watari slowly moved his hand back onto his shoulder, looking him dead in those big grey eyes, and L allowed it this time as he sunk back into the pillow, watching him as he carefully sat down beside him. He looked at him critically for a moment, observing the child's expression silently as though thinking about something, and then he began to sing the only song he knew word by word._

 _Softly, in a whispered voice much like a lullaby, he sang,_ _"God save our gracious Queen. Long live our noble Queen. God save the Queen. Send her victorious. Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us: God save the Queen..."_

A door opened and the lights around him flickered on, effectively waking L from the half-sleep he'd previously been in. The lights around him told him: enough rest. Time to open your eyes..suffer...remember...live on.

The pains came back hauntingly...feeling their way up his back and down his spine...he thought he might could even feel Kyba...still inside of-

"God...save our... _gracious_...Queen..." L's eyes opened slowly, his voice quiet against the click clack of the hard bottomed shoes. He sang it slowly, with varying degrees of consciousness, "Long live our... _noble_ Queen...God save the... _Queen_..."

"L?" Watari whispered.

"Ryuzaki...Ryuzaki, c'mon..." Matsuda stuttered quietly on in the background, saying his name twice more even, but L couldn't hear anything at this point except Watari in a dream-like memory reciting the anthem to him...and the hard truth of those shoes against that cement...

Coming closer and closer still...

The breathing in his ear of the middle-aged man as he thrusted inside-.

"...Send her... _victorious_...Happy and... _glorious_..." His voice cracked on the edge of the last words, his eyes closing and opening slowly to see, with blurred vision, the shadow of the man nearing him.

The screech of a metal chair sounded against the ground in a slow, steady drag. L swallowed, squeezing his eyelids together as it clanged to a halt before him. L didn't look up. He opened his eyes after a moment to see his feet, bare now, against the grey cement. The whiteness of them was almost startling...the blue edges were frightening...

"Your name, L. Please."

"...Long to...reign over...us..."

"L. Your name, n-"

His voice picked up, despite the rough hoarseness it now possessed and the fact his words were like broken jagged glass,"God save the _Queen_."

"L-"

"O' Lord our God arise, scatter her enemies, _and..make..them_.. _fall._ Confound their _politics_ , frustrate their _knavish tricks_ , on thee our hopes we fix: God save us all."

"Light? What's L singing?" Matsuda asked quickly within the pause, straining his ears to understand the English that came from the detective's mouth, but it had been years since he'd used it.

"I think...he's singing-..."

"...God Save the Queen." Watari provided in a reserved tone,"... more or less the national anthem of the United Kingdom.."

Matsuda looked back to him, clearly confused, and though Watari initially was going to say more, he simply shook his head in response, looking back to the camera again. It needed no explanation. Telling them it was a song he sang to L as a child after a nightmare would do L no favors. It was as it seemed: L was finally at his end.

"Kid-" Method attempted again in the midst of the the task force's conversation bumbling in the background, only to be swiftly cut off by L's now booming voice, echoing against the factory's walls.

"Thy choicest gifts in _store_ , On her be _pleased_ to pour; Long may she reign! May she _defend_ our laws, And ever give us cause, To sing with heart and voice... _God save the Queen!"_

L continued to stare at the ground, now frozen in absolute silence, his breathing ragged and unsure.

He knew this was the end.

"L, tell me your name."

A hand gripped his face, turned his head upward and forced him to stare into the television, his eyes wet with tears, his body shaking with both fear and rage. Watari looked into back into his eyes.

Watari.

This man who he owed his life to, who became his father when his real one was dead, who protected him throughout his entire life...He was so far from him now. He was in that television, staring back at him. And it dawned on him that he may never see him again...

"L..."

"...Your name..." Method's face suddenly blocked the view, but as though he had X-ray vision, he knew behind him, Watari was watching him silently...praying for him to simply say those three words.

L closed his eyes and he again could feel those hands around his hips, _his_ legs against his, _his_ chin in his back...

Tears streamed down his face and he felt as though he was back in the House. Scared, alone, distant in the murky waters, sailing in the sea isolated from all of humanity..Twelve years old..scared of the present, the future...and himself.

"Your fucking name!"

L's eyes snapped to him, his arms jerking against the restraints as he leaned forward, "Elliot!" L screamed out as hard as he could, feeling not only his voice break, but his will at the same time.

He sucked in a breath, his eyes studying Method's. They stared into each other, watching carefully, and there was only a brief pause before the realization had sunk in.

L had given in. Rule and law, thrown out the window.

"Elliot..." He swallowed, his lips quivering, "...L _..._ Lawliet _..._ " He whispered the answer, and it was the last thing he said as Method looked into his eyes, his piercing blue staring back into his grey.

Nothing was said.

Method stared on, mouth open, eyes shaking, body weak.

And then there was the sound of a door closing.

Method was gone.

L dipped his head as the voices of the task force came around him floating in sentences he couldn't comprehend. In sentences that could've meant everything and nothing to him but it didn't matter.

He shut his eyes.

"God save our... _gracious_ Queen..."

* * *

Watari held the phone to his ear, his lips pushed together tightly and his eyes focused on the little boy sitting in the chair...

He wasn't so little now, but to him...

He still saw him as that child, smoke-stained and scared. Fear seeping through his hard gaze and sadness emitting from his pain-filled screams in the middle of the night. He still saw Elliot.

The boy he adopted at fifteen because L told him he didn't want to have to leave him and because he'd adopted him in his heart the moment he saw him cry when he realized his parents had died. He saw, in that chair, his _son_.

He'd always known from a young age, L would have to do what the rest of the world didn't want to: it was the price of genius. He always knew too L would need to do things his own way: that had been prevalent since the day he'd met him. He'd also accepted, hesitantly, that L would need to put himself in dangerous positions and he would have to always be ok with this.

He was never ok with this, truth be told, but he'd pretend he was. It was what L wanted.

But he could't take this. Not for another second.

"It's impossible." The voice responded curtly, "Mr. Wammy, with all due _respect..._ you're asking me to do the _impossible_ here. I want to find L too, and I'm working my ass off, but..." The voice tapered off softly, "...Look, without him having a cell phone...or his belt...I just can't do _anything_ about-"

"What about the video? It's a live feed, you should be able to trace it _or something,_ shouldn't you?"

The others looked to him, waiting for some kind of success with this line but Watari's face grew more grim.

"No, I told you I tried that already. It's untraceable and-"

"Then _keep_ _trying_ , Matt." And with this, Watari closed the phone with a look of anger written on his face. Dejectedly, he looked back to the video, looking at L's slumped form.

There had to be _something_.

"Who-..." Matsuda bit his lip, looking at Watari with apprehension, but decided against his better judgement and asked the question, "Who's Matt?"

Matt? Matt was their only hope of pin-pointing L's exact location. He was, without a doubt, the most capable of any living person on Earth: and even he was at a loss. Watari felt a sickness stirring inside of him.

"Someone who could help." He replied after a moment, "...he could find L's exact coordinates if he had something to trace...however I'm afraid..." Watari trailed off with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose, "I'm struggling to recall...I feel there most be some sort of connection I'm missing..."

Light looked from the monitor to Watari, "What do you mean, Watari? We've looked through thousands of names for a match and-"

"No. I don't believe Method could be a man L knows. Do you remember...L said he's, more than likely, doing this for _money_. That he was _hired_. If this is true...who would hire him to do this? It must be someone L knows or _knew_ but...who could it be?" Watari sat down slowly into L's usual seat, looking at his computer screen with a vague sort of expression in his eyes. It was something close to exhaustion, but Light knew he could still see the burning embers of determination in there.

"The connection, L is saying, has to be the person who _hired_ Method instead of Method himself...however...I almost feel as though I recognize him..." Watari whispered staring quietly at the screen, "...but maybe I'm only trying to grasp at straws...maybe I just want to _believe_ I know an answer here..."

Watari rubbed a hand across his face, closing his eyes and swallowing, "I wonder if I was wrong for telling him to give in.."

"No." Soichiro was quick to reply, "Watari, please, whatever you do: don't blame yourself for this. I don't know your relationship to Ryuzaki but... If, God forbid, that had been Light sitting there, I would have reacted just as you did. I wouldn't have been able to bare any part of that."

Watari gave a small smile and looked to him with a contemplative expression.

"Yes, but...that's my job." He looked back to L.

Just thirty minutes prior, he'd been crying: something he hadn't seen L do in years and there he was...tears down his face, looking at him through the camera with all the pain in the world...

Like the day he'd met him. So much pain..so much sadness...

And he'd promised to protect him.

Watari dipped his head into his hands, pushing his wrinkled skin up with both palms before resting them at his forehead. His heart was exhausted and wrenched of all emotion other than fear. His anxiety was higher than it ever had been in his entire life, and still, he tried to remain calm. He couldn't allow L to see him this way, he couldn't appear to be helpless or hopeless. He had to be the pillar of strength and...

He sighed.

"...my job, however, comes second to my promise." He whispered, and looked up from the floor to the screen again, his voice rising only a few decibels to ensure Soichiro could hear him, " You said, Mr. Yagami, you didn't know what our relationship was." He paused and wrung his hands in his lap, "To me, he's been the closest thing to a son I've ever had in my life. I never had children, but when I found L, I made him a promise."

Matsuda leaned in further in his chair, eyes studying Watari's shaking form. Aizawa looked too on at the elder man, someone he'd always held respect for. Though he'd held high revere mainly because he was awed by his patience for the detective, he know was set back by his words. He didn't _deal_ with him because he was hired by him or because his pay grade was unusually high. He didn't complain for the same reason he laughed when his daughter spilled sauce on his shirts or wrote "I Love You" on each of his ties in black permanent ink. His eyes grew softer, his formerly reserved position becoming more relaxed as he released his folded arms.

"I promised him I would keep him safe..." Watari swallowed and turned around to face the elder Yagami, "I am determined not to just find him but ensure that _beast_ doesn't touch him a single time more."

Soichiro, suit crumpled, hair messy and unkempt, stepped forward and clasped a hand onto the older man's shoulder, looking through his rimless glasses into his red rimmed eyes, "We _will_ find him, Watari. And we'll find _Method,_ his men, and whoever it is that hired him just as well...That is _my_ promise to you..."

Soichiro's expression lightened, "...from one father to another."

* * *

L's eyes opened, a hand guiding his head upwards and water poured into his mouth. He choked at first but quickly began swallowing. The water flow paused before continuing and he blinked nervously, looking around to see if his setting had at all changed.

He was still in the warehouse, broken beams and flickering lights in a dilapidated mess all around him. The TV, however, was now black. There was no feed. Fear rose inside of himself, an emotion he would have typically battled fairly quickly. What had happened to him?

"Watari?" He called out numbly, "...Watari?"

"Kid." This came from Method's sandpaper throat, "I'm so sorry..." His words were in crumbles, "...I'm cutting this off, alright?..."

"Wha-...What do you mean?"

Method squeezed the water bottle in his hands, looking into L's eyes with an intense stare, "I'm dying." He said this with finality.

He cleared his throat, throwing some of the water back into his own mouth and wiped it with the back of his hand, "...I've got a policy on myself, but I wasn't ready yet...My one boy is ten and my girl is twelve and..." He looked up into his eyes and then looked away, somewhere distantly into the background of the room, "I didn't want to leave them yet...But now I see my time's up."

"How?"

Method gave a sly smile, but there was nothing but pain and agony in his eyes, "You're the boy from the fire..."

Fire?

L listened with baited breath, eyes taking in his form and his face: but he still didn't recognize him. He tried to imagine him younger, fire licking the sky around him...still...nothing.

"You wouldn't recognize me. I pulled you out, but...you didn't see me. There was a lotta smoke after all..."

L's eyes narrowed. He'd been hired to do this...by _someone_...and this someone knew he'd been at the scene of the fire that had engulfed his one bedroom apartment as a child and effectively ended his parent's lives...so then...why? Why him specifically? If he hadn't even seen his face...why Method?

"You were hired...but why did someone hire you to do this to-"

"Revenge." He said it without hesitation and even laughed a little, "My policy is don't ask don't tell. I never ask who the client is, who the victim is...or even why. I just do it for cash...ten thousand U.S.D a guy. Fifteen for ladies. But...hah...now I see the irony, kid: the real victim was supposed to be _me_." He leaned forward, his eyes watery and threatening to overfill and spill out, "I'm not sure any of this had anything to do with you, kid. And I'm real sorry about th-...I'm _real_ sorry about _everything_. I just wanted my..." He swallowed, "I wanted them to be secure...I just wanted-..." He swallowed, a tear falling down his rugged cheekbone and he released a breath, closing his eyes, "...I wanted the best for them."

He pulled something from behind him, holding the heavy metallic object in both hands. His eyes watched his grey ones reflectively, "I'm not gonna kill _you_ , so don't worry.."

"What is it you're doing then?" L asked, looking from the gun to his downcast eyes.

"When I'm gone...my kids at home'll get the money." He looked up to meet L's gaze. "I killed Kyba and Morho. It won't be long 'till the cops find their bodies...this is my only option now." He shrugged, shaking his head and looking back down to the gun, "...You asked me what my name was, right? My name was Melkin Hobbs and-.." His voice broke.

He swallowed down his guilt.

"I am so sorry...Elliot."

There was a hard and heavy smack across his skull and the room faded into black.

* * *

 _Reviews well appreciated. Thank you for reading. :)_

 _Word Count: 4,596_


	6. P1: Chapter 6

_AN: I'd like to say thank you to_ everyone _who has been reviewing. You mean the world to me._

 _Music I listened to: Heavy Rain Piano Suite at full volume with a rain sounds video (any rain sounds nature video will work, they're usually used as a sleep aid) at half volume, playing at the same time through youtube. Very cool effect, definitely captures this chapter._

 _Without further ado..._

* * *

 **6**

* * *

L's eyes shot open and almost immediately snapped back together again as the sun's powerful rays flooded into his dilated pupils. He re-opened them after a moment, slowly, ignoring the pain that ate at every inch of his body. He dug his hands into the soft ground beneath him, deeper and deeper, feeling the wet black soil between his fingers.

He was in dirt.

He was outside.

He swallowed gulps of fresh air and pushed his hair our of his eyes hurriedly. With sudden determination, he looked around for a location. He saw a puddled brown road extending in front of him, through hills of green swaying grass, for as far as his eyes could see. Before him, nothing but patches of dirt and calf-high grass existed. He turned around as best he could crane his neck and looked through the chain-link fence which he leaned against. He took in the image of the gigantic rusted grey box behind him with shaky vision.

It's metallic roof, textured with waves and glistening with what must have been a recent rain, sat on top, falling apart at the hinges. The door to this building sat heavily within a corner, red with rust and a small busted window. This area, where the building sat, guarded by this fence, was nothing but dark soil and garbage: metal debris and forgotten construction supplies.

It was a contorted playground of tetanus and forgotten construction. Forgotten people and forgotten work.

A metallic banging suddenly met his ears and stole his eyes from the building.

He trailed his eyes along the fence until his they met the gate. A good ten or twelve feet away from him, he saw it was clamoring open and shut against the heavy winds. He looked back to the stretch of sky in front of him. In the distance, it was a rolling charcoal painted horizon.

He intertwined his fingers in the chain link fence, and pulled himself forcefully, from the ground, and stepped cautiously towards the gate. That warehouse...had that been where he'd been held all this time? Inside that little rundown building? And if so...was that where the remains of all three men were? The final resting place for Method? With every step, his determination grew like the building clouds in the distance.

Ominous and looming.

Was that the final resting place for...Kyba?

He reached the gate and grabbed a hold of the it, yanking it forward and backward again, but it was chained shut with a lock; a shining new lock that looked strange and out of place amongst the rusted salvage scrap that composed the rest of the area.

Method. Had he done that? Of course he had. Then yes, this was the place. The burial grounds of one man he had yet to piece together. The burial grounds of another man he never met or knew. And then the burial grounds of a man who had...

He looked back at where he'd awoken and saw that there was a phone there. A small black flip-phone, old but he hoped was still usable. He made his way back with shaking but determined steps. The phone: it would be his only ticket out.

Potentially, the task force might would be able to track the signal, and if not for that, he could at least describe the surrounding areas. Black soil...dark green grass...

He looked into the sky.

An impending storm.

That could certainly help them narrow the possibilities. Simply following weather patterns, they could determine which area of Japan and...

He grabbed the phone with his single reaching arm, the other grabbing onto the fence with all the strength left inside his body. He snatched the black flip-phone from the dirt and brought it towards his face. He dialed the number and listened to it's ring with fear.

It rang only once.

"Hello?...L, is that you?"

"...Method's dead..." L whispered numbly, his eyes trailed back to the warehouse and then to the dirt road ahead.

The wind was faster now, thicker and stronger.

"L...? L,..Are you...Are you _alright_?"

L could feel his hands begin to shake and his strength begin to leave his legs as he listened to the voice that he thought at one point, he might not hear again.

Was he alright? His body was weak, his burns were raw. Images came back to him in a nightmare that didn't require sleep: the mattress, the dark room, the cold...

He let go of the fence and slid down, feeling the metal rub his acid burns. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

"I'm safe." He responded back in a faded voice.

A voice that knew no direction and was lost in it's own world, but was desperately trying to hold onto reality.

"Oh...Oh thank God..." Watari said, taking a few deep breath, "Just, tell us where you are, L."

"I don't know..." L whispered back, his voice devoid of color and strength, "...I don't know, Watari..."

"It's ok, L. It's alright. I'll have Matt trace this call. Alright?"

L looked into the sky. Electricity flashed, thunder rolled and boomed as it played it's game of warning. How could you blame lightning when thunder warned you? He shook against the breeze and swallowed, "Yes. Ok."

L closed his eyes, listening to Watari's muffled voice as he called on another phone. Minutes passed by this way until suddenly a voice came over the line, "Ryuzaki?"

It took him a moment to place a name to the voice. He could see the face. He could remember locking him up and releasing him. He could remember his brilliant deductions crumbling into ignorance when this person, he determined, could no longer be Kira. He remembered the revelation: Kira may not be possible to catch. He remembered the depression...he remembered the darkn-

Light.

"...Yes, Light?"

"I'm just making sure you're still alright. Watari's on the phone now. I forgot his name.." Light gave a little short laugh, "...It's an English name."

L thought this over for a moment and decided that there could be only one person Watari would contact to trace a call,"...Matt?"

"I think you might be right, Ryuzaki. Yeah, that is the name. Do you know him?"

"Yes. He's good at this sort of thing." L murmured, "...You'll find me soon then.."

"We're going to come get you now, act-."

"Make sure someone stays at Head Quarters...It needs to be guarded at all times..."

"Mogi's going to stay behind, Ryuzaki, don't worry so much." He'd attempted to be lighthearted, though, it came out sounding muted and frail. Even his momentary laughs were somehow empty, "Ryuzaki?"

"Yes, Light."

"You're going to be alright. Stay there. We're on our way."

"I could hardly get anywhere...should I try..." L whispered back, watching the sudden trickle of rain fall down onto his feet in front of him.

He lowered the cellphone from his ear, letting it fall into his lap, and shut it against his thigh. He brought his legs to his chest as the rain begun to fall heavier. He closed his eyes again and let his head fall forward into his knees.

Watari would be there soon...

But how was it that he could face him? How could pretend that nothing had happened past the beatings? How could he look him in the eyes now? He squeezed his arms around himself a little tighter.

He could feel something inside...broken, damaged, busted...

 _L looked B in the eyes._

 _There was something dark in there. Something...he'd always seen before but..._

 _But he'd never wanted to believe, truly, that it was there. The intent...the motive...the drive...to kill. He remembered meeting him for the first time at thirteen. They'd been opposites in every way possible, but L always thought he'd been interesting in a way. Like a creature he could study and maybe...befriend._

 _Now he saw there were no possibilities of this and reprimanded his naivety internally. Wondering how could he have been so blind? So careless?_

 _L looked at him now and saw the evil bursting from him. That speck of darkness had grown thirty times larger within the span of a single day and showed who he really was. The illusion was gone and now L just saw B in his flesh. He was a monster. The only kind of monster that L feared: human and real._

 _His cold porcelain skin and jet black hair fooled others but not himself. He could see the harsh contrasts between himself and B. Their eyes told it all and not just the color. Watari was one of the few who could tell the difference between them without falter or hesitation. Watari knew that darkness had been residing in B. He recognized it the moment he'd taken him in. He'd just hoped he could shine a light. But the downside to Watari was always his ambition: it's what made him a good inventor. What also made him good was his intuition: he knew when it was time to give up._

 _There was no hope for B._

 _L looked at B now._

 _They both knew what the other knew. L knew B had killed A. B knew, that L knew._

 _They both knew, there wasn't enough evidence._

 _B's smile drew onto his face and he gave a low chuckle: one that didn't require his lips to move. He looked above him in that way that L had studied so many times before. Like he was looking at something beyond him..._

 _"We'll see who wins." He said in a voice suggesting something dark and imminent, "...Elliot L Lawliet."_

Woken by the sound of a vehicle, L opened his eyes. Rain pounded against his bones, darkness surrounded him, coldness enveloped him.

His jeans were drenched in water and mud, his hair was plastered against his cheeks, and heavy streams of water rushed down his face and mottled skin. The headlights, bleary on the muddy road, were becoming larger...brighter...

They were there and they were real...coming closer and closer...until they were beaming onto him. The car stopped, the doors opened.

He grabbed a hold of the chain link fence again, pulling himself, shakily, to stand, and watched carefully as a man ejected himself from the back of the black Suburban and walked forward slowly. Careful, purposeful steps revealed the man as he came closer. L's hazy vision focused on him and saw the white smoke hair...he could almost smell the vanilla hard candy..

He pushed himself gently from the fence.

Other figures came behind Watari in the darkness, but L's eyes focused solely on him.

He swallowed, feeling a burning behind his eyes, feeling his insides sink into the pit of his stomach and churn angrily against the emotion.

"L." Watari whispered, only a foot away from himself, and through the rain, L could hear it; he sounded distinctly aged and tired.

He took four quick few steps forward and found himself enveloped in warmth... Watari's arms surrounded him, pulling him in close. He listened to his irregular breathing, his whispered: "I'm sorry..."

L shook in his grasp for a few moments before he felt his legs give beneath him and the weight and enormity of the world come crashing down onto him all at once.

But he no longer had to be strong...he could fall.

* * *

 _Not finished, just wanted to end here. This is the transition chapter into the second part of the story. (This story will be compromised of Part 1, which is all of what you've read so far, and Part 2 which is what you'll start reading next chapter. I might split it into one last part at the end, a short Part 3 consisting of maybe three or four chapters, but we'll have to see in the future how I organize this.)_

 _Thank you, and please, if you have time, review for me. :)_


	7. P2: Chapter 7

_Part Two_

* * *

 **7**

* * *

He almost hadn't expected the light when he opened his eyes. He half expected to wake up from a hopeful dream and find himself tied up in that room again. He almost thought he'd be in that warehouse on a mattress...splayed naked...Kyba's hands around his...

He felt a shiver run through him and he swallowed it back, down into his stomach.

Light streamed in from the window in front of him, rays of bright white pouring through the glass like water. He watched it hit the dust that danced in the air and around his comforter. Twirling in nothingness-

"L."

His eyes didn't move. The light intermingling with the air particles felt too comfortable in comparison to the alternative; the daunting task of looking up into the eyes of the man who raised him. He couldn't possibly. Not yet. Not now when he felt so unclean.

When the memory blew over, when the shock had left his body, when he didn't hurt so terribly...things would be better. _Then_ he'd be able to.

"L..." His hand reached out, touching the top of his head with gentle fingers, but the touch elicited only one response. He flinched away just as he felt it touch him, drawing himself inwardly like a child.

Kyba. He could only think of him. Grasping his hair with those two meat-like clubs, yanking and pulling. While he screamed in ecstasy, he screamed in fear. As he got his climax, he felt his world fall apart.

He flinched and stared at the white blanket with a wide uneasy stare. Still, he couldn't look up, but out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Watari's hand. He'd drawn it back half-way and was drawing it back further now with hesitation.

L gripped his hands around the sheets beneath the blanket, "Please, look at me, L."

L tore his eyes from the comforter slowly. He stared at Watari's hands for a moment and the way they trembled with old age, the white powder-like skin and thready needles networking just beneath his flesh. Pulsing with life. Old life.

He swallowed down his fear and looked up at the older man, in his desperate blue eyes, and waited for his next words. He couldn't speak yet. Words were caught in his throat with a net that was attempting to act as a filter. What could he say? What _should_ he say?

"You're safe now, Elliot." Watari whispered, moving himself to the edge of his seat and both his hands towards one of his. Within his hands, L could feel that neither of them had much strength right now, "Whatever that man did to you-"

"Did you find the bodies?" L asked in a dark but curious tone, one Watari had heard him use once when asking how it was exactly that B had died. L, moving his gaze to the ceiling, his eyes tracing invisible lines, blinked his red rimmed eyes and swallowed dryly.

Watari became quiet for a moment and grabbed something from beside him. In his peripheral vision, L watched the glass as it was offered towards him.

"...Yes. We found three. Drink this."

L looked at the glass of ice water and sat up slowly, Watari hand helping him into a more upward position, "Slowly...there we are.."

"Did you...identify them?" He took the water and allowed sip before closing his eyes. It had to be best thing he'd ever tasted; like how the rain should have felt on his skin the moment he woke to freedom.

Freedom...

Freedom?

"Yes. Method was the first man we found. His real name was-"

"Melkin Hobbs..." L murmured, "He told me that at the end." L turned his head towards Watari, looking him in the eyes as the scene replayed itself in his mind, "I did know him, but I don't remember. Even still...I've tried to..."

Watari's brow furrowed, bunching together as he looked over the top of his glasses into the younger eyes that looked back to him deep in thought. L switched his gaze back towards the ceiling and Watari reeled for an answer: "I searched through all of of our oldest cases...I don't understand."

"He wasn't from a case." L shut his eyelids closed momentarily, "He's the man who pulled me from the fire." He re-opened his eyes, tracing invisible lines again that rushed around the wall before him this time.

"But-"

Watari was speechless as he watched L bring the glass to his lips again.

"Why? Why would he hurt a boy that he saved?"

He paused briefly and looked towards Watari with lethargy in both his expression and movements, even moving his head was beginning to tire him, "Hew was paid, as I said..and he didn't know who I was until I told him my name..." L took another drink of the water, "...Supposedly, he didn't even know his employer...but after finding out who I was, he seemed to be aware it was a revenge plot. They only used me to exact their revenge on Hobbs. Who _they_ are...I don't know..."

L set the empty glass down onto the side table beside him and looked back to Watari casually. The eye contact was forced, it was hard. He was unclean, he was dirty, he was disgusting, he was vile, he was unworthy to look this man in the eyes, he was-. He looked away.

"I'd like to take a shower...please."

* * *

Watari removed bandage after bandage from around him. And despite informing him that he'd given him a bath while he'd been semi-conscious just hours ago, L felt filthy when the gauze had been removed and thrown into the garbage behind him.

He stood vulnerable, in nothing but boxers with his wounds and bruises exposed to the steamy air. He felt shaky on his feet, but strength would come, he reasoned. Strength would find him.

Watari turned from the shower, wiping his single dripping hand against his coat, and looked him over with a frown deep in his wrinkles.

"Let me get you something to eat first."

"No, Watari. I'm fine, I assure you." L replied darkly, moving towards the shower and pulling open the glass door. "Thank you. I don't think I'll need any more help..."

Watari gave him a hesitant expression and then moved towards the door, picking up a wash cloth from beside the sink and wrapping his wet hand inside of it, "Alright.." He whispered, "...if it wasn't for the bench," Watari begun, motioning towards the built-in bench within the shower, "...I wouldn't have allowed this. I'll be back in a few minutes to check on you."

"That won't be-" L began, reaching out to touch the warm water rushing down from the powerful sprayer above.

"You won't be getting your way on _this_ one..." He replied sternly, "I'll be back in five minutes."

With this, the elder man left the bathroom, and it's sterile white tiled floors and walls behind himself. L felt the solitude surround him again, but instead of anxiety, it brought him peace.

He entered the shower, closing the glass door and locking himself within the steam chamber. The hot jets of water burned his skin and tore him apart, but he needed to feel clean again. The distraction the filth posed was welcomed, but needed to be gotten rid of at the same time.

He stood beneath the spray of hot water for another moment, letting the imaginary grudge slide off his skin and down the drain, letting the nonexistent grease pour from his hair, letting the water burn him and letting it cleanse him.

He grabbed the bottle his hand came into contact with first and fervently squeezed the contents into his palm. Big thick puddles of something sweet filled the surface of his hand and he scrubbed them together and then across his body. Heavy suds surrounded and coated him, but it wasn't enough. He scrubbed it into his hair, across his face, down his legs and in every place he could think of.

He rinsed and repeated. Then again. And one more time with a wash cloth he managed to grab in the midst of his sudden hysteria. His healthy skin was red, his raw burned skin was bleeding through the thick wiry fibers of scar tissue that bound itself to him.

He took a few breaths and stilled, bringing the wash cloth up to inspect. Among the bright but fading streaks of fresh blood, there was a rusted crust-like residue. Dried blood. And he knew where that came from...he knew where that had been..in a place that he hadn't seen, that no one had seen, that no one would _ever_ see.

He could still feel it... He knew these were delusions, phantom pains...but it was so real...he could feel Kyba's hands around his...and inside of him he could feel his...inside...

The cloth fell from his hands and his body slid down the wall and onto the tiled shower floor, letting the water hit him...beat him...take away the blood but not the sat there for what seemed like forever. Just breathing, listening to the water's heavy spray pound at his spine. Feeling the heat spread over it wasn't working. After minutes of attempting to be calm, he found himself beginning to panic. The water was ineffective...and so long as the water was ineffective, he would be unclean and if he was unclean, he was defective and if he was defective, he would never solve the Kira case. People were going to die because he couldn't get Kyba and his hands _off_ of him. He swallowed again and again.

The water, ineffective. Soap, useless.

Defective. Defective. Defec-

He turned backwards, just slightly. Just enough to make out the handle in the corner of his eye, and reached, turning it sharply to the left.

The water came out scalding, turning his skin the color of blood instantaneously. The steam thickened, his pain was tripled but, he reasoned, it was worth it if he could be clean. If he could rid these sensations. He tried to burn the feelings away. Where he felt Kyba's hands, he burned. Where he felt Kyba inside, he burned. Maybe it would be enough...maybe it would just _help_.

He sat back on the floor again, feeling it rip his back apart like nails across his skin.

"L?"

L looked up.

"L," Watari grabbed the handle, pulling it back to himself until the water shut off and they were left with silence. The only sound being their breaths and the drip, drip, drop off the edges of the shower head, "...what're you doing? Do you know how hot that water was? I...-" He sighed, grabbed a towel and looked back into the heavy-lidded eyes he was faced with.

His eyes looked beyond, into something deep and dark. Like they were seeing things, too many things, that he shouldn't.

"Why did you do that? Hm?" Watari wrapped the towel around his shoulders, pulling him upward from the ground of the shower stall, "..maybe if you'd ate something, like I'd suggested, you wouldn't be in this position..." He murmured in a distracted tone as he helped him out of the shower and onto the toilet seat.

He crouched down to meet his eyes that looked into his, but really saw nothing.

"Tell me what's wrong, L." Watari's voice shook with desperation, "Are you alright? ...Are you...in pain?"

L's eyes flickered, he blinked and stared back into his eyes with something close to realization, like he'd just woken from some kind of sleep. He shook his head and looked downward at the white towel around himself, freckled with dots of blood.

"Pain?...I...Yes, you could say that. I'm...sorry, Watari." He swallowed and pinched the corner of the towel with two fingers, feeling the material between them, "...I'm just...a little slow at the moment."

Watari was silent for a moment, his expression a mixture of confusion and concern. He paused in repose and then reached out slowly, grabbing his forearm with a gentle grip. L looked up into his eyes and Watari wanted to tell him something that could bring him out of the trance he was in. That could extinguish all of his agony. Something that would lower his guard just enough to tell him what was bothering him, what was hurting him. What was on his mind? A mystery.

Those grey eyes told him nothing but pain. Watari looked at him. There were no such words. These did not exist. He had to wait.

Watari swallowed, turning away from him and letting go. He held back the burning in his throat, the hurt in his eyes, the screams inside his head.

When he wanted to beg please...when he wanted to remind him he'd raised him since adolescencel...when he wanted to confront him and say he could see something was wrong... _more_ than wrong...

He just simply said: "...Let's wrap you up."

* * *

L did not want to lay there.

Upon instruction, he ate the rice, he drank the water, and he restless, nightmarishly slept for three hours as he'd agreed to do. But now, there was no more pacifying him. Watari simply asked him to lay there. To rest.

Telling him he needed to work on the case came with a resounding, _"No, L. Rest."_

But he didn't want to lay there. No it was rather like: He _couldn't_ lay there.

Although Watari was unaware, L was aware, that laying there was the least effective way for him to get any rest. Laying there, with nothing to occupy his time brought him back to another time, another place. Words and faces clogged his brain and shook him awake and forced him into paranoia. It wasn't just Hobbs or Kyba. No, there was Naomi Misora, there was B, there was A, there was every face at every crime scene he'd ever inspected, whether photo or real it didn't matter. It all felt within an arms reach in his dreams.

He tossed onto his stomach, laying his head sideways, looking at the bathroom through the crack in the door that provided a little ray of light. Otherwise, darkness encapsulated the room. Blackout curtains had been drawn shut, the lights were switched off.

Here, in the darkness. It reminded him of-

No, he couldn't lay there.

He moved back onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

No, he could not.

L moved slowly from the bed. His strength and speed had not been fully granted back to him yet, but steadily, he was regaining himself with every passing hour, little by little. He stood, hand steadying himself against the wall, and he moved towards the door with shaky vision that was slowly coming back together.

He brought it open and a flood of light greeted him, but it didn't hurt as it had before. It took him only seconds to adjust and then made his way to the staircase, descending them slowly. With a sudden sharp stabbing pain L quickly noticed the state his ribs were in. Breathing wasn't all too terrible, however, apparently walking distances, especially those involving stairs, was excruciating. He grasped the side with a single hand quickly, pausing to swallow and breath. He took another step and then another. Slowly, in this stabbing pain, then step pattern he made it down the spiral staircase and towards the bottom, he heard the hum of whispered conversation, the clicking of keys, and the buzz of a monitor pleading for sleep.

He only realized he hadn't bothered to get a shirt or change out of his pyjama bottoms upon making it to the final ten or so steps. It was here at this point that he could see the little team, positioned around flying paperwork and murmuring gossip.

He'd almost made it to the bottom unnoticed when a sudden shooting pain caught him by surprise and forced him to break his steady breathing with a sharp intake of breath. He'd even tried to keep this silent by performing the breath solely through his nose through biting his tongue, but it did no good. The alert men were instantly aware of his presence despite their chattering. He'd hoped he could keep himself concealed with silence until he could make it to the ground floor. He knew he'd look less pitiful then. Here, on the stairs with a hand around his side and in pain which he knew was evident on his face, was not the image he'd been hoping to convey. He grasped the area firmer and focused on descending the next few stairs quicker than he had the last thirty.

"Ry-..Ryuzaki." Matsuda begun, his eyes wide as though he'd been caught in some deviant act and his hands beginning to fold and unfold themselves, a nervous habit L had noted the first time he met him, "Watari told us you were going to be in bed for the rest of the day." He gave a smile, gripping the base of his neck with his right hand, "But don't get me wrong, we're sure glad to see you!" His smile begun to fade as he watched L descend the last two steps and attempt to regain himself as he held onto the end of the handrail.

Bandages were wrapped tight around him, covering almost the entirety of his torso and shoulders. His skin elsewhere was blotched with bruises, cuts, and silver-pink vicious-looking wounds that were half healed.. Guilt clamped down on him in his gut again. It had been eating at him since the moment Ryuzaki had turned up missing. Something deep inside of him felt not just worry, not just sympathy, but a deep rooted sense of life-altering _guilt_. And now? It was even worse.

He was going to stay at the Head Quarters that night, as he'd done most nights, but decided instead to take his friend up on his late-night offer. Myzuki had met twins in one of his classes and after a detailed description of them on the phone, Matsuda had been hooked. He hadn't seen much of the opposite gender since the start of the case besides Misa, and considering she was off-limits, she wasn't much to be desired for Matsuda. He wasn't the type to wreck a seemingly happy relationship. So a harmless dinner and movie sounded irresistible. And at the end of the night, he'd planned to just stay at Myzuki's place.

He hadn't been planning to get lucky, like Myzuki was. He just wanted to smell a little perfume, tell a joke or two, pretend the world was safe and beautiful and wonderful like he'd believed when he was in college.

He just wanted...a little normalcy.

So it was his fault then, he decided, that Ryuzaki had been kidnapped in the first place. And fate would have it that he got stood up anyway and ended up staying the night at his Grandmother's house who was closer than headquarters.

By the next day, finding out Ryuzaki was missing, he felt like an utter fuck up. And now?

Looking at Ryuzaki, standing there trying to keep going when his body was screaming to please let it rest, he felt something more than just guilt. It was like a punch to the gut and hands around his throat.

His frown deepened.

"Ryuzaki..." Matsuda whispered with a darker expression on his face, "...maybe you need more rest. I can help you back to your room if you'd-"

"No, Matsuda." L replied stiffly, releasing the railing and moving towards his chair, "Thank you for your concern...but I'm fine."

"Ryuzaki, I think Matsuda's right. You don't look well at all." Light begun, rising from his chair and moving towards the detective. He knew L wouldn't appreciate the help, in fact, he'd probably swat him away or glare at him with those sword-grey eyes, but he couldn't help himself.

He could see Matsuda's guilt and he'd discussed it with him once, but if anyone, Light had reasoned with him, should have been feeling guilty, it would be him. After all, he was the one who'd been _handcuffed_ to him. How it was he hadn't felt a thing, he'd never know. In fact, he was an extremely light sleeper. At home, muted footsteps downstairs had woken him from a deep sleep many a time.

He had run the night over and over in his head, trying to remember the time he fell asleep exactly and whether or not L had been asleep too. But strangely enough, it was almost...a blur.

And the moment he woke? His brain had been foggy, distant. It took him almost five whole minutes to realize L was even gone. He'd had this sense that something was missing from the room, but what it was, he couldn't figure out until finally he'd lifted his hand and saw the empty handcuff oscillating from his wrist.

Everything clicked, his mind sharpened, and he was jumping off the bed yelling for Watari. He knew that L would never release himself, even if the building was burning, he was on fire, and he couldn't get Light to wake up, he'd drag him down the stairs with the handcuff secure.

So here he was now, just as guilt ridden as Matsuda, but he buried the feeling a little deeper and tried to keep himself outwardly neutral. He knew Ryuzaki wouldn't appreciate anything more than vague concern. He knew this very well...

Spending nights with a man who shot up from a deep sleep in a cold sweat had taught him this.

"I'm fine, Light. Thank you all for your..." He swallowed as he sat into his chair, and to everyone's surprise, he sat in it normally, "...efforts. But I'd like to get back to the case now.."

"Wait. Ryuzaki, I-..." Light almost scoffed at this, "Don't you want to know.. _why?_ "

L pushed himself toward the computer, moving his mouse down towards a file. His eyes blinked at it silently, his throat visibly swallowing again and again. Swallowing both saliva and fear. "Why what, Light?" His voice was almost devoid of life.

"...Why that man kidnapped you. we found out his name but-" Light gave him an incredulous look and folded his arms, "Ryuzaki! What if this relates to the case? I mean do you really think this was all a coinci-"

"This has _nothing_ to do with the case." L replied firmly and though his mouth was open as though to continue, he froze.

He'd only glanced.

Just a passing look from his own blindingly bright screen to Light's. Only a brief look. But the words stood out to him in bold faced font, black against white. His name, Melkin Hobbs. He switched his eyes from Light's to the next computer screen occupied by a confused looking Aizawa and then Matsuda, and then the elder Yagami . Each one, a different article. A different photograph. Different font with the _same_ name.

"You've been researching him _._ " L stated, eyes narrowing, and he looked to the others with sudden determination that was reflected in it's entirety within his voice, "Melkin Hobbs is _not_ of any concern to us. As I told you before, he was _paid_." L turned back to his screen, and with a sigh his voice reverted back to it's greyness, "He had no idea what he was doing. I'm fully convinced of that." He took in a breath, placing the tip of his thumb between his teeth, "It would...just be best if we just got back to the case."

"Wait." Aizawa shook his head, folding his arms and offering both a frown and a furrowed brow in response to L's unmoving profile, "So you just want to forget about all of this? Just pretend nothing happened because it doesn't have anything to do with Kira or this case? Even for you, this is ridiculous, Ryuzaki! We need to find the people responsible for this!" There was an immediate pause of silence and Aizawa's mouth dropped open in utter disbelief before he clenched his jaw tight and balled his fists into small spheres of rage, "You said someone hired him, right? This Hobbs guy? Then we should be looking for him! Right?"

Aizawa looked around at the other men in the room who offered him considerate albeit brief eye contact, he opened his mouth to yell something, anything to wake these people from their trance. He almost felt crazy. Like the high school nerd who didn't get informed it was Senior Skip Day. No, worse. The high school nerd who wasn't informed there would be a school shooting.

The amount of shock, the amount of confusion in his eyes and in his shaking fists was cut short when he looked into the doorway beside the staircase where Watari stood, a tray in his hands and a frown on his face.

Watari looked Aizawa in the eyes. There was no malice, as Aizawa might have expected, having just yelled at the closest thing Watari probably had to a child. Instead, he was only met with a weary gaze.

There was a moment where an invisible string connected their minds and Watari said everything within those short moments. He only had to simply shake his head and Aizawa released his fists, shut his eyes and turned from the older man. He had respect, he wasn't an asshole or a punk. But he couldn't deal with this right now, he needed out.

He moved towards the front door, grabbing the handle and pulling it back with all the force he could muster.

"I need some air."


	8. P2: Chapter 8

**8**

* * *

Silence had taken up most of the long hours of the day, drifting by slowly with the ticking of the steady clock on the wall. At first, L had demanded updates and despite most of their efforts having been directed towards finding him, deaths had occurred and there was news to review and discuss. But assignments had been given quickly and silence, once again, took over.

L, bruised, beaten, bleeding periodically through his bandages. He looked vulnerable and exposed sitting in that chair like the rest of them, half naked. But his eyes still blocked the world out, his body was rigid with focus, and his hands dexterously and furiously typed on his keyboard.

To Matsuda, it felt like only seconds ago that he was looking at L on that television screen, tears on the surface knowing he'd caused him to possibly...meet his death. If not that, he decided he'd come back a shell of what he'd been before. What else was he supposed to believe with him singing? Talking to hallucinations? Acid burned? Begging and pleading and-...?

Matsuda leaned back into his chair and looked at the clock in the right hand corner of the computer. It was late and he could hear some of the others packing to go. Aizawa had been holding back another fit of anger all day, but as many of them knew from experience, Aizawa would feel better the next day with sleep that night. None of them had really been getting much of that for a while.

Matsuda watched as Aizawa put his last stack of papers together, sat them beside his computer and turned off the monitor. His finger lingered against the computer screen, his eyes turning over to Ryuzaki's back, caught in the glow of his and Light's screen. The bandages were spotted and matted with blood, but each time Watari had mentioned them while bringing him tea, L simply combated it with a _"Later, Watari, please."_

He couldn't understand Ryuzaki, no. He didn't think he ever would. How a man, a young man at that, could be so driven and determined as to ignore having been kidnapped and tortured, so caught up in this single case that he didn't even want to discuss it, he would never know. But as much as it annoyed the living piss out of him, it was also something to be admired. Only briefly of course, because usually it ended with him enraged and out of control. His methods were, after all, purely founded with madness.

But briefly, he could appreciate it.

And briefly also, he could sympathize.

He'd wondered occasionally, in fleeting thoughts, what L's life must have been composed of...

He didn't think about this for too long either.

He sighed now, setting his pen on his stack of papers, and moved slowly with his hands in his pockets towards Ryuzaki. He reached out cautiously, as though wondering while doing so, if it was actually the sane decision to make. He touched his shoulder gently, in a spot he didn't think would cause him any pain, and allowed his hand to rest for a moment there. L jerked away quickly. His eyes flickered in his peripheral vision, making eye contact quickly with Aizawa. And though Aizawa initially had planned to nod to him as an apology, he found himself stopped by an invisible force.

Looking into his eyes, he half believed he understood something there. He almost thought he saw something flicker for a second. Like a switch on his inner self, L had turned it off just a moment too late, and he saw something in there before he returned to his dead-stare. The one that gave away nothing...but in comparison, the other look in his eyes gave away everything.

Now he knew...

Now he understood...

He may have been determined to find Kira, but it wasn't that he was too distracted to think about what had happened...it was that he was _trying_ to distract himself...with little luck.

His shoulder's fell from their tense position and Aizawa's hand fell from the air.

L nodded with a blink of his eyes in acknowledgement.

Aizawa, after a moment, nodded back.

L swallowed, releasing a breath, "I've thought about what you've said, Aizawa, and I've decided you're right...There are some things I need to look into..."

Aizawa's brow out of no doing of his own, raised to the edge of his hairline. He parted his lips, as if to say something, but could think of no rational words to use in reply. L was admitting he was wrong? To him?

"If you all wouldn't mind..." L turned back to his screen, "...I'd like to try and find the names of Melkin Hobbs' children...as well as their new address."

"Wh-...What?" Matsuda whispered.

"Ryuzaki..." Light begun carefully, "I think I can speak for all us when we say we'd love to help you in anyway we can but-...What does that have to do with anything?"

"...I'd like to find who was responsible for hiring Melkin. Whatever their intentions may have been, they're a criminal and though I find it unlikely they'd do something like this again, I'd like to be sure. Considering I have no leads, I'd like to find some. I suspect his children may be the closest thing I can find."

"You think his children know about this?" Soichiro replied, "Ryuzaki, I-"

"L."

L eyes focused towards the back of the room, gaining a glance of white hair, he swiveled around slowly.

"Upon learning _'Methods'_ real name, I took the liberty of having Matt do some research on Mr. Melkin Hobbs and his two children. He should have their information on file for us."

L stood quickly from the seat and thrust his hands into his pockets, "Good. Let's give him a call then."

"Right. On the security line?"

"Yes. That should be best." L paused, looking to the others, "I'll make sure to inform you on what I find..." L murmured after a moment, "...have a good night. Thank you."

Watari followed L up the stairs into the dimness of the darkening hallways, the wall sconces being the only source of illumination. He looked to L mildly for a moment and gave a small sigh, "Do you really think they'll know something?"

"I'm not sure..." L replied with a small shake of his head, popping the tip of his thumb between his teeth, "But that's my secondary motive in this..."

"And your primary would be?"

"I'd like to send them each a check..."

"Wh-...What? Why on Earth-"

"Melkin Hobbs did his work to ensure they were well taken care of and for only that reason. His daughter and son, respectively, are twelve and ten years old and the orphanage they're going to won't be giving them more than bus fare on their eighteenth birthday. Not every institution is run like Whammy's...-"

"Yes, but...His children are... _grown,_ Elliot."

L stopped mid-step, cocking his head slightly to the right, his eyes focused on the ground below, "Grown...?"

"Yes. They're, from what I can remember looking over the files...hmm...must've been around thirty or so. Could've been in their later twenties...But most definitely grown. However, what you said does sound familiar. I think their grandchildren were around that age..." Watari paused, "Oh yes. Melkin's daughter had a boy and his son had the girl." Watari gave a small humorless laugh, "I apologize, this all seemed like irrelevant information at the time when I was reading it."

"...It is now." L whispered. "His children are...grown...? But then why..." L furrowed his brow, "Excuse me. I think I...need some time to think. Would you have the files faxed over, Watari?"

"W-Well...Yes. Absolutely. Is..something wrong?"

L began towards an elevator.

"...I'm not sure. I'll see you in the morning."

Watari hand fell on L, "I meant-"

L pulled away quickly, looking back to him with his eyes fully opened, his hands balled into fists reflexively.

Watari paused, his hand slowly guiding itself back towards himself.

"I meant with _you._ "

L fell silent, his gaze turning back to a demurer one, his hands unraveling, his body returning on it's path to the elevator doors.

"...Right. Well, good night then."

The doors closed.

* * *

L knew Melkin didn't lie.

His words may have been convoluted to a point where only he knew what he meant, but he knew he didn't lie. He was trying to save up for his children: even if they hadn't needed it. But then...why?

And there was only one explanation he could come up with.

Guilt.

But for what?

A few explanations came to mind. Marital issues, abuse...Maybe he blamed himself for his children's mistakes. But to go so far as to torture for money? Despite the fact they were making it on their own? This took a special breed of guilt. One that he just couldn't shake. One that he thought could be repaired with dollar signs as band-aids. What could he have done to make things so bad for his children?

Something was missing from the puzzle.

Two things...

The other missing piece was who would hire Hobbs to torture the person he saved so many years ago? What sort of revenge could that have even been to him? L was sure he was distant from common courtesies and typical human emotion, but he still wasn't sure why Hobbs would have been effected the way that he had? He'd completely broken down to nothing. Like a chemical reaction, his structure simply...dissolved. Right back into it's basic form. Then he...

L tried to think of it as happening to himself. He was not above mild methods of torture to extract information from possible suspects or witnesses. No. He'd done it in the past. And at first, L almost thought it was someone he'd previously done this to trying to get their pride back from him. However, he'd never ever gone as far as Method did. He'd never physically hurt a person. Isolation, blindfolds, and tasteless porridge meals typically worked well enough, and if not... there was one time...

He closed his eyes, shutting his view from the city below.

One time he'd sprayed a girl with a cold hose. Her teeth were chattering...her legs could barely hold her weight but she had to try: she was chained standing up to a wall. She cried and cried...

He tried not to feel anything...but he did feel _something._ Even if it wasn't what Watari felt as he looked away with a hand over his eyes...he felt something. He thought more than anything...it was probably fear that she didn't have the information he was looking for and thought she had...and then that would mean everything he'd done had been for nothing. But his deductions, not assumptions, had been true. She did know. She was just strong and her acting skills were unparalleled.

But what if?

What if she hadn't known anything? He'd never have gone further than the water hose, but...what if he had? What if he'd resulted to Method's styles of torture? And for her to know _nothing_?

What if, further, she'd been someone he'd once _saved_ _?_ But hadn't initially recognized? What if-

L opened his eyes again, looking down on the quieting city below. Young men in large jeans and hoodies roamed, watching fearful girls in tight skirts. Noodle strap bags and long sleek hair.

L moved to the bed and stared down at the carpeted floor.

A chemical reaction would have happened in him too. One that would break him down to basic molecular structure. A single carbon floating around aimlessly. Maybe for a month. Maybe for a day. Maybe for the rest of his life, he'd feel a guilty pang when he thought of her face or name.

But...to kill himself?

Would he kill himself?

"No..." L shook his head, "No, sorry, I can't understand _that_ Mr. Hobbs..."

The door opened.

L looked up.

Watari looked back.

His eyes overcast by shadows, his skin pale. He studied the boy before him for just a moment and then closed the door behind him.

"We...We need to change your bandages."

L looked down to himself. Dark, wet strips of gauze lined his skin. Blood was bubbling up from one place, crawling down his skin.

Wordlessly, he moved to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet lid as Watari entered, fumbling with a large roll of bandages between his fingers. He appeared almost...nervous. He stopped suddenly, like someone hit pause, and he stared down at the roll. His eyes were hidden from him, but something shimming in the light fell from his face, staining the white gauze.

"Watari?"

Watari swallowed visibly, his breath shaking, his hands clamping around the roll tightly until the tips of his fingers went white, then, just above a whisper, he said "I know what happened to you, L. I was hoping my suspicions weren't true, but...When you said nothing about it...Stupidly I thought...I thought maybe I was wrong."

L looked to him, obviously provoked by the words coming from Watari, his eyes scanning his body for signs of deceit, his fingers gripping the toilet seat lid in fear, "Watari what do you mean?"

He could feel finger tips touching him, he could feel things inside...he could feel breath on his neck, snaking it's way across his skin like a disease, "I don't know what you mean, Wata-"

"I was the one who bathed you when we got you back here...I saw the damage. Do you think, Elliot...that I'm a fool? My observational skills certainly don't match yours, but I've never been more than a step behind. So do you think I'm incapable of seeing the obvious?"

There was a moment of complete silence, the only sound the vibration ringing in L's ears. Watari stepped closer, touching the bandages carefully and then begun to unwind them from around his skin. Gnarled and ugly like an oak tree, L could see his skin had begun to heal in pink-red flesh tones that stood stark against the white.

"Besides your uncharacteristic flinching from both Aizawa and myself, besides the obsessive _scrubbing_ and _scalding_ hot water, _besides_ the way you acted coming back from that room with Kyba...I _washed you_ and I _saw_ the blood trails, I _saw-"_

"Stop!" L jerked away from Watari's hands, his eyes narrowed and burned with anger, "Yes, Kyba raped me but I didn't withhold information from you. My sexual abuse is not relevant-"

" _Relevant?"_

"Yes, it's not _relevant_ to Kira, it's not _relevant_ to Hobbs, it's not _relevant_ for any reason. It didn't and _doesn't_ matter."

"So your saying it didn't even affect you?" Watari paused, shaking his head as he watched L's challenging glare, "That's not what I saw on the camera!"

"It was more than rape that did that to me. I was drugged, burned, dehydrated-...Individually, nothing affected me. I was sure I was dying...I was sure I'd...never see you again. _That_ is what affected me, and that's all. At that point, when I was in that room with Kyba, I was sure that Metho- _Hobbs_ would stop at _nothing_ to get what he wanted from me..."

Watari paused in thought, but a look of disbelief rested on his face as he shook his head. He gave a half smile formed by sarcasm and discontent "Fine...fine, L, but if it _didn't_ affect you...if none of that meant _anything_ to you...why are you trying to find the person who hired him? Why are you seeking them out?"

Watari attempted to catch his eye, but L looked on past him, at the back wall, looking into the grout between the tiles.

There was silence.

* * *

 _"Heart attack. In his prison cell."_

 _Nights had always dribbled by like black paint droplets. Intermittent and smeared across daylight skies. They passed hour by hour in fear. He didn't close his eyes. All he could imagine was Beyond behind him, with a smile that shouldn't have ever really been called a smile._

 _He knew he wasn't there._

 _But where was he? Nobody had seen him since...then he just...ran away._

 _All he could think of was that he was there. He'd found him. After all those years, he'd found him again. And he was standing there...watching him sleep and ready to strike a knife through his back, into his lungs. He'd listen to the air escape from the hole he'd created, trying to catch breaths only to drown in his own blood. That would be how B would love to see him go._

 _Suffering._

 _Without being able to scream._

 _Just looking into his eyes._

 _So he would know...it was him that killed him._

 _He slept in periods of minutes when he had to. Or he'd nap in the daytime sitting in a chair looking outside if he had to, but only if he knew Watari would be around._

 _Not sleeping became easy._

 _It became productive._

 _It became...just a part of life._

 _Even after death._

 _"Heart attack. In his prison cell."_

 _L looked at Watari and thought he'd get a good night sleep. Finally._

 _But then he realized that night as he stared up at the ceiling..._

 _...he hadn't really had a good night sleep since he was twelve years old._

* * *

Yes I know, haven't updated in a while. Expect more updates sooner.

Thank you for reading.

Please leave a review below? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks again!


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